Drama, dialogue and dialectic: Dionysos and the dionysiac in Plato's Symposium

DRAMA,DIALOGUE AND DIALECTIC: DIONYSOS AND THE DIONYSIAC IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph

by STEVEN R. ROBINSON

In partial fuüilment of requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy Apd, 1998

@ Steven R.Robinson, 1998

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DRAMA, DIALOGUE AND DIALECTIC: DIONYSOS AND TWE DIONYSIAC IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM

Steven Ryan Robinson University of Guelph, 1998

Advisor: Professor Kenneth Dorter

This thesis is an analysis and interpretation of Plato's use of Dionysos and the dionysiac in his dialogue .-

It is shown how severai distinctively dionysiac

phenornena are conflated by Plato as the specific context within which the dialogue unfolds. Dionysiac language and imagery is then employed within that context to funher elaborate the symbolic signif~canceof those feanires. Plato thereby sets up something of a dionysiac framework within which he can locate philosophy and relate it to other feanues of Greek

culture. The main argument that is developed concems Plato's articulation of a whole range of social dichotomies by means of the various stxuctures of dionysiac religion that he employs. Dionysiac religion is S e with contradictions and contrasts, and some of these contnists ailow Plato to set up mutually exclusive classes of people who cm then be identified with, or opposed to, the class of philosophers. These contrasting classes then

reemerge within some of the speeches on Ems, where the various theories of the nature of

Ems can be translated into theoretical accounts of the relationship between the philosophers and the

a. By focusing on the division of the pplis in this way, Plato is able to ~ j e cthe t

thesîs that political community &man& the type of unifomiity traditionally demauckd by the Greek ppliS.and offers instead a theory of 'imity-maifference,''

which is to Say, a theory

that makes thejustice and the unity ofthe pplig dependent upon the entrenchment of a certain type of

diffemice - philoso op hic al diffennce. In

distingukhed by the discursive

of

and

particular, these two classes are

m,each irreducible to the other

and yet each necessq for the existence of the good pnlis. The pure philosophical discourse

of socratic conversation (or dialectic) is thus radically opposed to the popular discourse of the stage (or drama) by means of dionysiac symbolism. Plato's own dialogues then emerge

h m this dionysiac dichotomy as a third form separate from each of those and operating as an erotic bridge across the gap between hem: it is a type of discourse that leads the reader out of the lower, mythicai, public cosmological discourse of tragedy to the higher, dialecticd, esoteric cosmological discourse of philosophy -but without invalidating the former.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, 1thank my advisor, Kenneth Dorter for his patience, his care, his guidance and his faith in my ability to Say something worth saying. 1have leamed more than philosophy fiom Ken, and 1look forward to learning more still. May our paths

often cross again. To those on my advisory and examining cornmittees, Spiro Panagiotou, Bnan Calvert, Victor Matthews and the extemal examiner, John Anton, 1wish to express my

for their efforts in adjudging and helping to improve my work. Of s i n c e gratitude ~

particular note in this regard was Padraig O'Cleirîgh, whose advice stretched over the years and who always nndered assistance in the most helpful and positive terms: 1 thank you. Also, Jefhy Mitscherling, though not officially my advisor, gave me advice and contributed in many ways to my research, even translating a difficult and important

chapter of German critical text into English for me. It was Jeff s teaching that f h t Yispired me to study the history of philosophy intensively, and it was in his seminar on the

that 1 f idiscovend what was to become the topic of this thesis.

The Philosophy Department and its faculty at Guelph are, in my experience, unique in th& attempts to foster a positive and respecdul atmosphere for graduate student learning. From the moment 1f k t anived as a Masters student in 1986,I was made to fetl welcome and at home. The department took every opportunity to

accommodate my wishes and to offer me assistance when 1needed it, be it for financial,

teaching?nsearch or travel pinposes. The speed with which my dissertation defense and graduation have been processed is just the last of many services for which 1am grateful. 1 wish to thank in particular those graduate officers and chairs who served during my time here: Bill Hughes, Jeff Mitscherhg and Don Stewart; Carole Stewart and, once again,

Brian Calvert. 1owe a very special debt to the secretaries, Sandra Howlett, Judy Martin, Jeanne Hogeterp and Lin& Jenkins, who were always supportive and professional, and who have gone out of their way to be helpful. My family and 1will miss them. Though 1

move on now to an uncertain funire in the underemployed profession of academic philosophy, I know that wherever 1might end up 1wiii always miss king a member of this department. I wish also to thank my fellow students, many of whom are also now my fiiends.

In particular, Stephen Haller and Jonathan Lavery have contributed both to my education and, either directly or indirectly, to my research. Through the many,many conversations, seminars, papers, reading groups and the years of companionship we have shared, they have k e n a constant reminder to me of what the Life of phüosophy is dl about, and an illustration of the value of Diotima's teaching. 1thank both of my families for their continuous moral support, the Robinsons in

Saskatchewan and the Marlows in Ontario. My parents always aîlowed me to do just what 1wanted and misted me to make something woithwhile of it aU in the end Had it not

bem for that fnedom and misr, 1might have ended up a bored engineer, lawyer or some such thing. But moral support does not pay the bills, and so I also express my gratitude to the Canadian and Ontario govemments, whose generous financial support via the SSHRC

Doctoral Fellowship and Ontario Graduate Scholarship prognuns helped so much to fund

this research. 1also wish to thank Dr. Susan Young, former Director of the Canadian

Academic Institute at Athens, for facilitating my research while in Oreece and for helping

me and my family in myriad other ways. At Susan's request, the earliest form of this thesis was delivered in an exploratory papa presented to the CAIA almost four years ago.

Finally, my deepest debt of gratitude is to Kelly, my dearest hiend and cornpanion in life. Only her unswerving and unselfish support in al1 things has made this research and

my career in Academe possible. If ever any rholar fin& something of value in these pages 1have written or in those 1have yet to write, he or she too owes a debt to Kelly Robinson. We have learned about love together, and 1dedicate this dissertation to her.

TABLE OF CON'IENTS

Achowledgements List of Figures

...................................................................................

......................

i

...............o...................,.....

vi

.....................................

1

Introduction: Tragedy. Philosophy and Dionysos

*............................ .................................. A .Summary of the Dionysiac Aspects al)The Contest and Its Judge ............................. 14 a.2) .................................................... 16 a3)Drama ............................................................... 20 ............................................................... 21 a4)Eros a.5) Mysteries ...................... ........................................ 23

Chapter One: Dionysiac Aspects of the

13

13

B .Review of the Literature Concerning the Dionysiac Aspects of the

svrnwsium ................................................

..........

................................................... 27 b.2) Helen Bacon .......................... . ..................... 35 b.3) John Anton ...........................................*.. . 39 b.4) John Brentlinger ................................................... 45 b.5) Stanley Rosen ...................... .......................... 51 b.6) Diskin Clay ....................... . . . . .............. 64 b.7) Seth L.Schein ................................................... 73 b.8) David Siàer ................... ..... ... ......... 81 b 9 ) Michael Morgan ................................................. 86 b.10) Thomas Gould ................................................... 95 b.11) Daniel Anderson ........................................ 103 ........................................................................... C - Conclusion

26

b.1) Gerhard Kriiger

111

Chapter Two: Philosophy as Mystery

................... . . ............................

..................................... ............................. B Philosophy and Mysteries in the 132 b .1) Socrates and Diotima ..................................... 143 b.2) Socrates and Aikibiades ........................ ................ C-Soc~atic-teu R a .................................... . A .Philosophy and Mysteries Rior to Plato O

Chapter T h e : Tragedy. Mysteries and Wine

Cbapter Four:

and

......................... . . ....

. The Problem Pushed to a Crisis .....

................................................ A - The Roblem Resolved .................... B .Ems and Political m e r e m ...............*.... . . ..... ... .............. C Ems and Religious Diffennce ................................................ D .Eros and Discursive Difference ................................................. E .Conclusion: Plato's Dialogues and Plaids Philosophy ..................

Chspter Five: DuPüsm and Qifkewe

O

195

233

234 253

268 278 286

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1

- IntroductionTragedy, Philosophy and Dionysos

It is in Plato's dialogues themselves that we first encounter the idea that philosophy must somehow be opposed to tragic poetry, though in the

(607b)

Socrates refers to the "quarre1" between them as "ancient" while provisionally banning tragedy fiom the philosophers' ideal city. Of the several nasons that Socrates gives there

for the existence of the "quarrel," none appears to have anything directly to do with Dionysos or the dionysiac. Yet when Friedrich Nietzsche proposed in that the essence of andent Greek tragedy lay in its specifically dionysiac features, he found entirely new reasons to put these two into stark opposition - so much so that he conceived the very essence of socratic philosophy to be anti-dionysiac. Nietzsche was speaking from the other side of this "ancient quanel" as a proponent of the superior value of tragedy, but that very opposition drew him into a consideration of

Plato's dialogical writing style (Nietzsche $812-14). For the dialogues, as the poetic voice of what Nietzsche labeled "logicd Socratism," are at the same time both anti-dîonysiac

and yet not unrelated to the dionysiac tragedy Plato had "repudiated." On Nietzsche's account, it is rather that Plato succeeded where Euripides had failed: while Euripides

attempted to i m p v e tragedy by amputating its dionysiac element and, likea bad doctor, succeeded only in "murdering"his patient on the operating table, Plato recognized the intrinsically dionysiac character of tragedy and instead fashioned out of it an entirely new

art forrn that was specifically animated by its socratic opposition to tragedy and to

Dionysos (90-91). As a result, Nietzsche was the first critic ever to propose that an understanding of Dionysos and the dionysiac is a prerequisite for understanding the aesthetics of Plato's dialogues, and so much so that the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy might be symbolized by these very two figures: Socrates versus

Dionysos.' Since Nietzsche's &y, few critics have shared the view that Dionysos is the key to Plato's writing style, though Western scholarship has always tended to agree with Nietzsche that Plato was anti-dionysiac in spirit. That tendency denves from Plato's psychological cornmitment to the employment of reason over and against the passions. Since Dionysos had always s t d as a personification of human passion, it seemed only natural to view him as an obstruction to the project of platonic philosophy, even if not its

very antithesis. Dionysos, however, does not seem to occupy a great &al of Plato's attention: there is only a scattering of direct nferences to the god throughout the corpus,

more than half of thern in a single dialogue, the

(Brandwood 151). It is all the more

remarkable, then, that one dialogue in particular, the ,-

has long been

recognized for its unusually heavy deployment of dionysiac imagery: though the god himself gets ody slight explicit mention, his likeness in the figure of Alkibiades. the wine-drinking that Alkîbiades brings, the eroticism of the event and, above all, the

'

Though it is cornmon in the iiterature to find Plato aligned with Nietzsche's Apollo in discussions of this sort (e.g.. Gouid, EtPtPPif 1ave 39), Nietzsche hirnself makes it clear that Soaates and his foiiowers are no more apollinian than dionysian. Rather. it U Euripides who, though moved by the spirit of"socratism,"was attempthg to transfixm tragedy into a p d y apollsiian fom (Nietzsche 8244). The apollinian dweiis specifically upon appearance, whîie P W s writing strives to transcend visiile reality altoge- so as not to commit the same rnistake ( 90).

s W n g description of Socrates as satyr and silenos, al1 add up to a forceful dionysiac thus provides an unparalleled oppominity to see the

presence in the text. The

dionysiac through the Iens of Plato's mind By looking through that lens, we should be able to test whether Plato is really as opposed to this god as so many interpreters have taken him to be. Moreover, the setting of the dialogue at a celebration of Agathon's fiat

.

victory as a tragic poet is generally recognized to be introducing some sort of a contrast between Socrates' philosophy and Agathon's tragic poetry -yet another angle on the "ancient puaml." Any angle on that quane1 is bound to raise the issue of the function of Plato's own written dialogues, even if only impiicitly. The

is therefore an

ideai text within which to observe Plato's own placement of philosophy vis-bvis tragedy and the dionysiac, and to test conceptions like Nietzsche's that would make them intnnsically hostile to each other?

Oddly enough, scholarship on the dionysiac aspects of the

has not

been profuse, and it is still quite normal to find new commentaries on the dialogue that

make virniaily no use of Dionysos at all.' Still, a smail contingent of scholars has over the

'

this way himself; It is most crinous that Nietzsche does not employ the was a favorite book of Nietzsche's according to Men (38~60,quotbg Kaman), the youth, and he carried a copy about in his pocket for years. And yet he refers to the (89),despite the fact that he has occasion to mention AilÙ'biades of only once in the in the same bmth as A"stophanes' view of Soctates (87) and to discuss the image of the satyr in Greek fiterature (61-67). This latter is most remarkable for the sûilnng way it parallels Alkibiades' 'That is the ongin of the fiantastic and seemhgly own description of Socrates in the so offensive figure of the Wise and rapturous satyr who is at the same time 'the simple man' as opposed to the god -the image of name and its strongest urges. and at the same time the prociaimerof her wisdom and art musician, poet. dancer. and seer of spinu in one person" (6566). Thaî Plato should use th%very h g e to descri'be Socrates seems a shocking paradox given îs the same sort of paradoxical Nietzsche's view of Plato. Codd it be that Plato's which Nietzsche is forcecl to explain cornter-exampfeto Nietzsche's theory as Euripides'

-

away (8 1-82)? E*g,Wen. whose lengthy (20-26) digression conceming Dionysos is only superficially a d serves d y to establish how thomughly antiaiigned with the text of the plaîonic everythingdionysiac m m k,such that the existence of dionysiac emotions, "nom Plato's

course of the twentieth century begun to draw more and more attention to this dionysiac dimension of the ,-

some even suggesting that it is thematic for the dialogue as

a whole. These scholars deserve our applause for taking its dionysiac symbolism seriously instead of just ignoring it, or dismissing it as a poetic decoration, the way so many othea have done. If the

differs h m the other dialogues by the intensity of its focus

on the dionysiac, then that surely suggests that the dionysiac has an important and specific role to play in the meaning of this particular dialogue. In this essay we shali follow that minority of scholars by analyzing the dionysiac content of the

in detail, and

we will be left with no choice but to agree that the dionysiac is not only thematic, but is

also the key to Plato's own statement of the aesthetics of his dialogues. We shall therefore

argue, like Nietzsche, that Plato has used Dionysos as the means to distinguish socratic philosophy and platonic dialogue from tragic poetry -but not in the way that Nietzsche does. This matter demands a more thorough aaalysis and synthesis han it has

previously nceived in the literature, and the aim of our treatment is to supply some of that. The previous critics who have noted and emphasized the dionysiac features of the

dialogue have either taken hem piecemeal or focused on one or two featuies to the

exclusion of the rest. None of them has managed to indicate the full, complex scope of die dionysiac theme. But though we hope to succeed in that regard, still there is a great

&al demanded of such an interpretation that we cannot provide within the confines of this disaxtation. There would appear to be two ways of conducting such an investigation. Fit, one could mount a N1-scale commentary that would expose the myriad facets of -

-- --

point of view, implies deep-seated sickness of SOC (26). 4

our theme through the entire text in be-by-line detail, and which would then serve as the solid foundation for more synthetic arguments. Ntematively, one could go straight to the

most important dionysiac features of the text and work up a synthetic argument in those

terms, introducing detailed textual analysis only where it is necessary to develop the synthetic argument. While the former type of study is clearly needed in this case, we have adopted the second method as more suited to the requirements of this dissertation. The much larger project of a Ml-scale commentary will have to wait for another occasion.

In the ,-

several distinctively dionysiac phenornena are conflated by

Plato as the specific context within which the dialogue unfolds. Dionysiac language and imagery is then employed within that context to further elaborate the symbolic significance of those feahues. Plato thenby sets up something of a dionysiac fiwnework within which he can locate philosophy and relate it to other features of Greek culture. The

nsult is an accolll~~lodation both ways: philosophy is portrayed as dionysiac in order that dionysiac religion itself may be given a new philosophical interpretation -and justification. Just as Plato's philosophical eros is prefigured in bodily sexual desire, so too his philosophical theology extends downward to appropriate even traditional

manifestations of Dionysos in festival, myth and mysteries. Plato's use of the dionysiac in the

is therefore mon than just one stylistic tool for communicating the

message of the dialogue; it is the very medium within which the dialogue is fashioned.

The argument we develop concems Plato's articulation of a whole range of social dichotomies by means of the various stmctures of dionysiac religion that he employs. Dionysiac religion is rife with contradictions and contrasts, and some of these contnists d o w Plato to set up muîuaily exclusive classes of people who can then be identified

with, or opposed to, the class of philosophers. These conmting classes then reemerge

within some of the speeches on Ems. where the various theories of the nature of Eros can

be translated into iheoreticai accounts of the relationship between the philosophers and the m. By focusing on the division of the

ain this way, Plato is able to reject the

thesis that political community demands the type of uniformity traditionally demanded by the Gnekpplis, and offers instead a theory of "unity-in-difference,"which is to Say, a

theory that makes the justice and the unity of the &dependent upon the entrenchment of a certain type of clifference-philosophical difference. In particular, these two classes are distinpished by the discursive difference of

and *,

each irreducible to the

other and yet each necessary for the existence of the good pPlis. The pure philosophical discourse of s m t i c conversation (or dialectic) is thus radically opposed to the popular

discourse of the stage (or drama) by means of dionysiac syrnbolism. Plato's own dialogues then emerge fiom this dionysiac dichotomy as a third form separate from each of those and operating as an erotic bridge across the gap between them: it is a type of discourse that leads the reader out of the Iower,mythical, public cosmological discourse

of tragedy to the higher, dialectical, esotenc cosmologicaI discourse of philosophy -but without invuiidcrting the fonner.

The dionysiac theme of the the speeches

is thus to be found more in the context of

-and in the cultural context of the dialogue as a whole -than in the

speeches on Etos themselves, and so our investigation must primarily be an explication of those contexts and the ways that they can modify our understanding of the speeches. The

opening chapter begins by Iaying out each of the various elements of the dionysiac theme in its own terms, independently of the way Plato has constnicted his theme. We then

embark upon a critical summary of the various efforts in the iiterature to read the

as somehow shaped by the specifically ctionysîac presence of one or mon of those feanues. Though this makes for a lengthy h t chapter, it is a very useful way to s w e y the widely incompatible variety of contrasting interpxetations that have k e n

placed upon this material. By identifying the limitations of those previous approaches we both prepare the reader for the positive contribution of our own malysis and prevent ou repeating ourselves many timcs over at later points. Where useful, we will recall and respond to these preüminary analyses also in the later treatment.

The main body of the argument will corne in chapters two through four, where we analyze in tum each of the ihrec major dichotomies that Plato articulates by means of dionysiac symbols: discursive (CM),religious (Ch3), and political (Ch4). The conclusion of this analysis is that Plato has used these contrasts to force a problem to the point of crisis: the problem of how genuine political community can exist in spite of these radical ciifferences in matters of the highest importance. Having established the fact of difference in each of these three important contexts, Plato also superimposes them all poetically upon the image of philosophy, whîch is to Say, upon Socrates. Al1 three dichotomies are then placed in jeopardy as the potential means to compt and shatter the unity of the onlÿ, just as Socrates himself was placed by his trial and his conviction before the Athenian

for his pursuit of the Me of philosophy. It is the very diversity of dionysiac religion itseif that allows Plato to use it as the putmive unity within which to model these other threatening divisions. The problem of the unity of the eplig becomes the problem of the unity of Dionysos; philosophy and

are portrayed as oppositc elements within

that putative unity. By bringing this problem out into the open, as he was wont to do with

latent problems, Plato forces upon his readers the demand for a solution: the illusion of

unity is destroyed and true unity becomes impossible unless the readers can now find a new theoretical solution. Hence, the need for what philosophy can offer. What solution

Plato gives can be found in the doctrine of eros articuiated by Socrates in response to the pnor speeches, and that is the subject of the fifth and final chapter. Unfortunately, several tantalizing problems arise on the fringes of this treatment which we are unable to deal with adequately in this context; they have therefore been bracketed off and left for future investigation. The fmt of these is the issue of Plato's

theory of drama, such as might be used to solve the riddle of the unification of tragedy

and comedy hinted at by Plato on the final page of the .-

In this regard it might

be helpful artificially to separate the contrast between philosophy and tragedy into thne distinct elements: sryle (or linguistic mode of expression); referace (or the nature of the tnith-value of these expressions); and doctrine (or what thesis is actually "taught" by the

work). In this euay we shall argue that Plato advocates roles for philosophy and tragedy that contrast in the fmt two ways but not the third. Philosophy is spoken in live

conversation, while tragedy is publically performed; philosophy is expressed via logic, and tragedy via myth; but, ultimately, what these two f o m teaclt must be essentialiy the same. Otherwise, the philosopher could not abide tragedy, and vice versa. Now,there is good reason to think that Plato's chief objections to the tragedy of his own day were of

the third sort: it was what the traditional Athenian tragedy taught about the go& and about the good life for humans that Plato codd not accept, and it was largely for this reason that Socrates banished the poets fiom the ideal city. But whether tragedy's

doctrines must necessariiy k unacceptable to Plato is another matter, and this essay wiiI

conclude that Plato needs both philosophy and tragedy working in tandem. A great deal of very intemting work has been done on this question,' but while our analysis leads up to the very threshold of that question, it does not lead across the threshold As a result, our

analysis does not lead directly to a resolution of Socrates' riddle about tragedy and comedy. 1would contend, however, that the results of our anaiysis must bear upon the resolution of that issue. A second issue that arises directiy out of this analysis is the problem of

esotericism in Plato's philosophy. Our investigation reveals how very closely Plato identifies philosophy with mystery cults in the Svmm>sium and elsewhere, and how this gives nse to a sharp and very real distinction between the spoken, "smtic" dialectic one

can experience in person (say, at the Academy), and the written conversation of Plato's dialogues. This raises the spectre of Plato's socalled secret "oral teachings" about which so much has been written, especially in ment decades. The mystery cults were, of course, famous for having theu secret doctrines and their strange myths that could be "understood" only by those on the "inside," who possessed the appropriate secret "allegory" with which to decipher them. This would appear to correspond perfectly to the hypothesis that Plato possessed a secret philosophy known only to his intimates and kept secret by them. and that the dialogues are, as it were, written in a code so as to keep those cbesoteric"doctrines secret. But, in fact, this sort of "secrecy" theory is precisely what our

analysis may be able to challenge, though it wodd take a whole other line of argument,

which we do not have room for hen, to show why. Such an argument would look closely at Alkibiades and the issue of his profmation of the Eleusinian mysteries, in combination

To namejust a few examples: Kuhn, Nussbaum, Rosen TheGould itself. Ancient: and ofcourse there is Nietzsche's The of 4

with his refennces to Socrates and the divine nature of philosophical talk. In short, if

Allribiades is presented as a profaner in the ,-

then Plato is as well, and the

actudy inverts out evaluation of the act of profanation. This might even turn out to be the key to Plato's raiionale for the existence of the traditional mystenes in the first place: it is not that the truth must be kept secret, as the popular conception would have it, but that the huth cannot be communicated despite our best efforts -it is

ineffable. As a nsult, the initiates are separated from the general populace by necessity,

and nothing they can do can overcome that separation. Socrates and Alkibiades are thus more like Cassandra-figures in the ,

in that they speak out the mith that has

been divinely revealed to them but nobody around them understands or believes what they are say»ig. This is, after ail, what Plato actually shows us: none of those who

listened to Socrates' speech, and were thereby initiated into the "cult" of philosophy, abandoned their former ways and took up the life required by Diotima's b'proper" pathway to success. Only the d e r of the dialogue is in a position to learn from the examples of Alkibiades and the others. Plato's dialogues, then, are like a partial cure for Cassancira's (Le., philosophy's) affliction: they are a means to bridge the gap between the experience of the initiates and the experience of the non-initiates: they teach an appreciation of the "raving" language that philosophen speak (the language of LpOPS)and they make it possible for non-philosophers then to enter into the life of philosophy. If this

is to be the "profanation" of a divine secret, then it is profanation not as a crime, but as a

duty of the highest oràer. In fact, any translation of "divine" Being into the terms of "profane" Becoming would be a profanation of this sort. whether it be in the r e a h of nature, of human action, or of communicative understanding: profanation of the divine

Forms is what life is all about -it is what life is. A third issue that is raised but cannot be pursued by our treatraent is the precise

psychology of Alkibiades' failure to become sufficiently philosophical. There can be linle that Plato

doubt that it is by means of his portrayai of Alkibiades in the

intends to revise the ciramatic icon of the "tragic hero" and this. of course, bears on the

prior matter of Plato's theory of drama. In particular, the emphasis on the dionysiac in the and Alkibiades' recognizable appearance as an image of the god calls out for

a comparison with Pentheus in EMpides' -,

who also resists the power of

Dionysos and is then ciestroyed after taking on the appearance of the god. In fact. it i s probably not unreasonable to suggest that Plato has this very comparison in min& and is using the comparison to cornct Euripides' tragic conception both of the role of Dionysos in the good life for humans, and of the nature of human failure to live such a good life. As some have pointed out, such a comparison would make Socrates himself the Dionysos to Alkibiades' Pentheus. This at least raises the question of whether Plato conceives of the Socrates of his dialogues as just one Wtuous human king that we al1 should emulate and

that we all, at least potentially, could be, or someone quite Iiterally beyond the paie of human aspirations

-a &mi-god on the order of Pythagoras in the eyes of the

Pythagoreans. Plato's theory of tragedy would presumably have the reader identify either with Socrates or Alkibiades, and it is no small matter to determine which.

These issues illustratejust how much ground there is to cover in the interpretation

of Dionysos and the dionysiac in Plato's ,

but our treatment confines itself to

the specîfîc matier of dualism and social diffmnce: the way Plato uses the dionysiac to articulate the problem of unity in poiitics, religion and discome

-and how he supplies a

socratic philosophy modeled on bacchic mystery cult as the solution to al1 of those

dichotomies so that philosophy and philosophical diffennce becorne the prerequisites for

the anainment of ail truth, beauty and justice in human life. Further research into those th= issues identified above can profit from the analysis provided by this dissertation.

- Chapter One

-

Dionysiac Aspects of the

-

A Summary of the Dionysiac Aspects

The basic argument of this thesis will be to the effect that Plato is using phenornena from dionysiac religion to indicate a number of distinct divisions within Athenian society, al1 of which are then aligned with the open antagonism between socratic philosophy and the -.

These divisions are then mapped ont0 dualistic

features of the various theories of the nature of Eros that are presented in the speeches. By this means, Plato can translate Socrates' doctrine of Eros back into the sophisticated statements of social division that are provided by the dionysiac contexts, and thmby present an account of philosophy and philosophical discourse with political, religious,

and pedagogical ramifications. It shall be our contention that Dionysos is quite iiterally the medium within which the

unfolds, since aU of the dualistic schemas -

erotic, discursive, theologicd and political -are comprehended, in some sense, by their medium: dionysiac re4igion. We need to begin our investigation, therefore, with a

summary of the dionysiac aspects of the .

The following s w e y attempts

bricfly to classify ail manifestations of the dionysiac under five basic headinp without, as yet, presuming that these five are the elements of a coherent theme. We then critically

survey the prcvious attempts in the literature to read the

as somehow shaped

by the spccifically dionysiac pnsence of one or more of these feanins. The usefulness of this initial summary ües in the fact that none of the commentators themselves, even those who have thematized the dionysiac aspects of the ,-

has ever taken al1 five of

these aspects into account.

al)The Contest and Its Judge The most expiicitly dionysiac feature of the dialogue emerges fiom a complex action within the text that spans the five speeches on Eros. It involves an invocation of Dionysos prior to the speeches followed by an answering epiphany of the god (or at least

a symbolic epiphany) after the final speaker (Socrates) has finished talking. The invocation occurs just after Socrates' arrivai at Agathon's house. Socrates and Agathon have been engaging in polite banter about which of them is the wiser, each proclaiming the other's greater wisdom. Apollodorus tells us:

"Enough of your sarcasm, Socrates," replied Agathon. "We'll settle our respective daims to wisdom a little later on, and Dionysos, the god of wine, shdl judge between us [ o i ~ a o q~ p O p & vrQ o ~Arovu'oq]; for the moment give your attention to dimer." (175e7- 10) It is not immediately clear what Agathon has in mind by this, but it is clear that Dionysos'

narne has been invoked to senle the question of which of these two is wiser.

This mates an expectation of Dionysos that remains largely unsatisfied untii the entrance of Alkibiades, who is described in ternis that make him a visual double of the god. Crowned with ivy and violets, held upright by a Bute-girl, drunk and leading a

cirunken revel through the city streets, Aikiibiades proceeds to crown first Agathon and -

--

-

--

'

-

-

AU Greek quotaîions fiom the Svmwa;Nm are from Dover's critical text and use his h e m m b e ~ gAii . Engiish transiations ofthe are by Walter Hamilton, d e s s ocherwise no&

dien Socrates with victory-ribbons, while declaring Socnites more deserving of them than Agathon. He then demands that everyone there join him in some very heavy' winednnking that eventually either drives out or overwhelms them all, except Socrates. Whether Alkibiades is to be understood as an achial epiphany of Dionysos or simply as a dninken reveler whose possession by the god is made explicit by the similarity of his appearance, then c m be no doubt that Plato is providing some sort of answer to the expectation created by Agathon's earlier invocation.

What Plato might mean by all of this is an open question. But this image of Dionysos that is given voice by the dninken Alkibiades cannot be merely incidental. A

talking Dionysos who appears in person, "on stage" as it were, leading a

a(or

dnuiken revel), bearing wine, speaking forth the language of mysteries, describing Socrates as silenus, satyr, Marsyas

-as a "piper" who leads people to bacchic rapture -

this is an overwhelrningly dionysiac pnsence reminiscent of Euripides'

m.

Whether Plato is king senous, merely symbolical or engaging in parody; whether he is reverent, reformatory or blasphemous; whether ultimately he adopts a positive or a negative stance toward Dionysos -whatever his message tums out to be. he cleariy has placed an image of this god in his text and given it a voice to speak to us about Socrates. There is no comparable appearance of a god's image in Plato's dialogues: a god who

steps forth naturalistically before the eyes of these symposiasts,no longerjust a figure in somebcdy's myth, but actuaIly present? There is something peculiarly "ciramatic" about -

- - -

-

At 214a2, Alkiiiades "puts badr" nearly a haif-gallon at once. Dover comments: "Che hesîtates to say tbat no one could dMk halfa gaiion of wim @ckly when d m d y dnink and d l talk coherently, but Plato seerns to k m g bis AIaiiades a touch of epic trement" (162). Epic

indemi!

'

Unlike the divine figures of the Tirnaeus.for instance, which are still seK'onsciously presented by the speaker in the form of a myth. this Dionysos seems to emerge without the story-

such a k r a r y device: it almost looks like a

m m *But while the nader (as the

audience) recognizes the figure as the image of the god, those who are "on stage" (within the text) do not. Plato simply must be using Dionysos to make some significant point; just

what that point might be is, of course, the subject of this thesis. But Aikibiades is not the

only dionysiac presence in this text -not by a long shot. The wine he has within him and that he brings to the othen does not belong ody to his character, it is also an essential feature of the party that he crashes.

Svmwalon Another obviously dionysiac aspect of this dialogue is indicated by its title and the nature of the event it portrays: a

w, or drinking party? Though Dionysos is a god

who repnsents many different things to the Greeks, he is first and foremost. and for the Athenians, the god of wine: wine is his power, his weapon, and his gift to mankind. Athenian festivals of Dionysos were organized around the annual wine-production schedule. Wine itself was refened to colloquially as "Di~nysos,"~ so that by dilnking it men were figuratively (and in some cases literally) said to be imbibing the god; subsequent dninkenness could be taken as divine possession, !

&mpuia

were, of course, primarily just occasions to dnnk wine in large quantities, and as such they were one of the definitive forms of the male Greek experience of the dionysiac? teiïer (Aristodemos, or Apollodoros) even king aware of i t No one within the text appears to see Dionysos in Aikiiiades; at Ieast, no one comments on it. as ~ h iaspect s is obscund by those (e.g., Rosen) who choose to translate "banquet"

'Dover pIpr9 (89), conceruhg Socrates' commait at 177el.

From Zveeoc, which Iiterdy means "having a god inside one." Gender-specificity rnatters here: women, who appear to have been generaily excluded but through the separate, fernale rites h m wine-drinlmg, encountered Dionysos not h

'

Dionysos was, therefore, a very reai, if invisible, presence at any -.'

and Plato

has put that presence artistically at his disposai simply by choosing such a setting for his dialogue. However, there is more to the dionysiac significance of the

than wine

were a forrn of riincal wine-drinking, a social institution

and dninkenness alone:

with a long history in Greece? Rigid etiquettes with religious sanction regulated the

conduct of events. The

m,or huge wine-jug in the centre of the room, was the ritual

equivalent of an altado In it, water was mixed with wine in varying strengths, and had to be filled and emptied (by drinking) a set number of times. Every

required its

"king," or symposiarch, to dictate the amount of drinking, the ratio of water to wine. and the nature of the night's entertainment and activities. The purpose of this "elaborate p

r ~

bi b e f l (Pellizer 178) was to mode1 the proper use of Dionysos' dangerous gift, which always threatened to destmy a person by releasing a flood of his lowest passions. Under the control of its symposiarch, the

elusive balance (-)

strove to maintain in its members the

between sober self-control and uncontrolled passion. There

alone, in that balance, could one enjoy the benefits of Dionysos but avoid bis attendant

hazards. As in life generally, so in the

w, success could never be guaranteed in

advance, and only the event could tell whether the outcome would be a gwd time had by and festivals surrounding the phenornenon of maewiîsm. Dionysiac religion thus divided sharpiy dong gender-hes (Carpenter & Faraone 1). Hemichs (21); Burkezt writes, "Dionysus, the god of h e and ecstacy. was worshiped everywhere; every drinker in fan could daim to be a savant of thîs god" (Ancient, 5). Lissarrague cails it "a social ntuai in the broadest sense" 25). 204-6). Here the near-religious character of the Lissarrague, ("Amund the is pffirmcd but as Oswyn M m y wams us, we must not take this too far. 'Tt is aiI too easy...to emphasize the pleasure principIe in sympotic literanue and ùehavioUT... without regard to the importance of religious context just as it is aii too easy to regard ail rituai as hnpiying reiigious rituai" (Muffay. "Sympotic History" 11).

"

-

au, w an offensive and self-destructive binge. The W. then, was like a

microcosm of the Ppiis: in its good and its bad outcomes alike it modeled the role and power of Dionysos in civiiized human life. was its typical conclusion in a komos.

Another dionysiac feature of the

a noisy, raucous procession of revelers through the public srnets at al1 hours of the night. It is just such a

that Alkibiades leads to Agathon's house. Roughly speaking, this

is the male equivalent of the femaie bacchic phenomenon of maenadism: in the

m,

the drunken, raving men are supposed to achieve an ecstatic self-transcendence (bacchzia), becoming no more than digits of the u d y band and engaging in al1 sorts of

was not restricted to the

behaviour prohibited by social noms. The

context alone: it was also a popular and coloumil part of the various annual dionysiac

festivals open to the whole public both in the city and the country in classical times." However, syrnpotic

were in a sense mire authentic, for in them we still see an

important and original feanire of the

a: its aristocratic arrogance. In conirast to the

impression one gets frorn accounts of

in the various publically sanctioned dionysia

(something like a Santa Claus parade),12sympotic

were not just fiolicsome fun for

ail: they openly engaged in hooliganism and vandalism." For the

was

essentiaily an aristocratic institution. with &ts in the warrior feasu of the Homenc era.

From olàen times the

a, with its brazen flouting of social n o m of decency and

''Comedy famously traces its mots to ihis festive context, its etymology suggesting "song of the a ." l2 'ïhough the p d s e derence of the word is somewhat unclear with regard to the public festivals (Pîckard-Cambridge63,102f.). it would not appear to be much different h m many of the other attested processions and choruses (Cole 28ffJ. Joan Burton writes that m the fourth cenairy BCE, "unnilysymposiasts persisteci &..cornmithg violent acts...~show by com*derablelitigafion hvolving violent sympotic misbehavid (233).

*

sobriety and its constant potential for damage to persons and property, was the special

pnvilege of the aristocrats, who used it aùnost as a form of social texrorism to demonstrate their distinct higher status. This particular f o m of dionysiac "madness" brought on by drinking wine - the

a- is therefore very closely associated with

svmwsia* In Greek art, moreover, both the

aand the m

s i a are major dionysiac

motifs, with the god often depicted at the head of festivities and his mythical entourage of

dninken satyrs scattered about him, engaged in an amazing variety of uncouth behaviour. The satyr, as the archetypal masculine cornpanion of Dionysos, represents the altered state

of men caught in the thralls of dionysiac possession. Perpetually in pursuit of wiw and sexual gratification, the satyr is the slave of his base passions. The satyr remains emphatically hybrid, though: it is not that a man possessed by Dionysos has become an

animal and ceased to be human, but rather that every human k i n g has an animalistic side that Dionysos lets "out of the closet," so to speak.14And thus the satyr is actuaiiy an artistic representation of the tnmsformed state of drunken symposiasts and komasts. In Plato's ,-

Socrates is npeatedly Qscribed as a satyr by Alkibiades, which is, to

say the least, surprishg considering Socrates' famous near-ascetic lifestyle and intellecniaiism; the oddity of this description within the context of a platonic dialogue is a paradox that &man& an explanation.

This brief account is enough to show that 'my

heavily steeped in dionysiac associations: wine, ritual,

was itself a context

m,and satyric representation.

l4Unlike centaurs. those 0 t h hybrià creatuns of Greek mythology, who represent by their violence a world outside of hmnan culture, satyrs "do not endanger the social ordei' 89). Their wildness designates 'hot a prehumanlumanlty but a (Lissarrague, "Amund the subhumanity, which is defmed ncgatively m relation to man" (Carpenkr & Faraone 220).

Of course, Plato could have chosen the

context for an entirely different reason,

with no intention of capitaiizing on its dionysiac connotations. But at the very least we

cm already point out that the inoption of a kpmpg and the use of satyric imagery were not themselves necessary cornponents in the depiction of a W. By including hem. Plato has compounded the presence of the dionysiac within this particular depiction.

a.3) Drama

Another dionysisc aspect of the context of this dialogue is the occasion: the celebration of Agathon's first victory as a tragic poet. Dionysos is aiso the god of the theatre. Tragedy,comedy, satyr-play, and in fact the entire phenornenon of Greek drama

and dramatic poetry wen the direct outgrowths of the cîvic Dionysostult. particularly the City Dionysia held every March.I5What was origindy a choral song-and-dance (Le., dithyramb) cornpetition in honour of Dionysos was msfonned, sometime during the

reign of the tyrant Peisistninis, into what we recognize as Attic drama.16And though an Athenian proverb declares that Attic drama had "nothing to do with Dionysos," l7 some

modem interpreters (begiming with Nietzsche) have argwd that the spint of Dionysos lies at the vety core of the Greek experience of drama, especially tragedy. But whatever the ultimate significance of the dionysiac might be within Attic drama, it remains a

simpk fact that in Plato's as in Socrates' &y dramatic productions at Athens still feu

"

AU evidence points to Agathon's victory having been at the Leuaia. a Iesser dionysia held in Febniary. l449alGll l6 The key source here on tragedy's or@ in dithyramb is Aristotle, (McKecm 1458). Ridgeway (4-8) attacks Aristotle's claim,Lwky (30-34) defends Aristotle. 612e, 67 le) as weli as Fnedtich (259.272) cites Pluta~:b'sauthority for this reteliing its o n : when Auchylos and Phtynichas introduced haoic legeads hto tragic plots. the Athenian audience îs said to have shouted out: 'What have these to do with Dionysos?"

"

1,615a).

very much within the ritual boundaries of the public cults of Dionysos. Theatre was, at least formdy, still a kind of ~ionysos-worship.18 gl.Plato has many and various refermces to drama in the

Not only

Agathon the prize-winning tragedian is present, but also Aristophanes the great cornedian.

We are told by Socrates that Aristophanes is concemed entirely with Aphrodite and Dionysos (i.e., sex and drunkenness, major themes of Old Comedy that hearken back to its origins in the "satyric"

The dialogue also famously ends on a ciramatic note:

before getting up to leave, we are told. Socrates had been discussing the craft of dramatic poetry with Agathon and Aristophanes. And since Agathon's victory had been awarded just two days before. it is even possible that this

is itself set during the

Lmaion dionysia. Though drama and svmwsia have littie or nothing to do with each other, both are closely connected to the figure of Dionysos. Plato has thus created a doubly-dionysiac context by combining them in this way.

a.4) Eros A third dionysiac aspect is the topic of discussion: Eros, the god of erotic love.

Here we m u t tread carefdy; eros (sexual desire) holds a prominent place in generally, but this was not necessarily on account of Dionysos. The -sion

had in

archaic times been an occasion for aristocratie youths to meet and become erotically

"

Friedrich reviews scholarly opinion on this matter of the dionysiac character of tragedy, and argues for a compromise solution thai restrîcts its essentially dionysiac aspects to its mon primitivefoms (274). as a play, accordkg to the dramatic Cf.eg., Gd,who attempts to read the conventions of iu oum, or AristotIe's. day. The sheer quantity and variety of dramatic reference she amasses is impressive. 177el. Cf. Dover, 89.

"

"

attached to older male lovers in their community as a means to acquiring virtue (cal1 it education, or socialization). The youths, though they couid not participate in the drinking,

wen allowed to wait upon their elders and thereby become objects of erotic attention. Such an association was expected to encourage a youth to mode1 himself upon his older lover. and thereby assimilate himself to the adult male group. As the power of the aristocracy waned, so too did this functionai homosexuality; but though this pedagogical dimension of the

slowIy disappeared, the eroticism remained and was

transferred more and more to slaves and prostitutes, both male and female.

m,

therefore, had always been erotically charged events and in Plato's day still they were occasions for sexual licence and di~play.~' As a consequence, it is only nahiral that a great deal of sympotic speech (swiving as sympotic üterature) should be of an erotic theme. and in this regard Plato's

can almost be said to fit a pattern, though in its own

more elevated, intellectualized way.

There are. however. some specifically dionysiac aspects of Eros, despite his king best known in Greek myths as an associate of Aphrodite. Consider our word "orgy," for

instance. It cornes to us h m the context of dionysiac religion, where it originally meant

"rites" (cipyia) and had no peculiarly sexual significance." Yet by the time "Bacchus" had corne to republican Rome (2& century BCE), it was the outlandish sexuai iicence of

his devotee's

athat provoked brutal npression by the state. Dionysos had always had

something of this air of sexual licence about him; in fact, his status as wine-god is 2' "Frorn the most elevated fonns of amornus discoune (iike Socrates)...to the most riarrgiilatedand orgiastic emtic homo-and heterosexual practices which could be unieashed as the ceiebration went on" (Pellizer 182). Wiîh regard to this tem. Burkert writes, '1Tbere is no doubt that sexuaiity was prominent in mysteriesf but the term r e f e d to the rites in generai, regarcüess of any sexual aspects 104).

*

.

emblematic of a deeper locus in the passions more generdy. Whether it be maenadic cannibalism (real or imagined), satyric drunkenness, wild dancing and music, or an "orgiastic" glut of sexual release, Dionysos is there implicated in the loss of self-control, and even of self, beneath the waves of repressed visceral human passion, released

communally. The

w, then, in its sexud immodesty just as in its dninkenness,

remains the attempt to enact the delicate balance between maintainhg and losing one's civilized self-control; between will, if you like, and passion, in a communal setting. For

this reason eros, as one of the most powemil passions, is almost as dionysiac as wine itself -a fact that is iliustrated by the dual character (Qunk und lusty) of Dionysos' cornpanions, the s a w :

Tnr ecstasy has its own laws and sources, even if dance and rhythmc music

can promote it to a special degree;...Nevertheless, there are two very specific stimulants that belong to Dionysos, which cannot have been missing even in the secret celebrations [Le., the mysteries]: alcohol and sexud excitement, the . . 292) dnnking of wine and phallos symbolism. (Burkert, &&&lgmn

And indeed, as early as the mid-fifth century (i.e., a generation before Plato). the figure of

Eros begins to appear in dionysiac vase-paintings of entourage, even cavorting with satyrs in the

as a member of Dionysos'

m.

A fourth dionysiac element is the language used at many points in the dialogue:

language that is evocative of mystery cd&. Mysteries were pnvate cultg in the sense that individuais were never required to participate, but elected to join on a voluntary basis. At the core of these cults was an "unspeakabIe" experience of the divine, to whidi the

members were exposed during their initiation process; the memory of that experience is

Aikibiades also bears a specid relationship, and it would be impossible to deny that Eleusis has at lest some role to play here in Plato's network of associations. Even granting this, the presence of Dionysos would still be somewhat a f f h e d here simply by mention of mysteries; but it is difficult to maintain that Eleusis is the pnmary mystery cult alluded to, or represented, by the character and speech of Diotima. which are much more bacchic than Eleusinian. To quote Walter Burkert directly: Dionysos is the god of the exceptional. As the individual gains in independence, the Dionysos cult becomes a vehicle for the separation of private groups from the polis. Alongside public Dionysiac festivals there emerge private Dionysos mysteries. These are esoteric, they take place at night; access is through an individual initiation, telete.... In contrast to the mysteries of Demeter [i.e., Eleusis] and the Great Gods [SamothraceJ, these mysteries are no longer bound to a fixed sanctuary with pnesthoods linked to resident families; they make their appearance wherever adherents can be found This presupposes a new social phenornenon of wanâering pnests who lay daim to a tradition of orgia transmitted in private succession." Diotima's mysteries are clearly portrayed as handed down this way in private succession. Likewise, Diotima is just such a travelling "charismatic" -described by Socrates as a foreigner delivenng her mantic services to Athms in a t h e of crisis (201d3-5). In the catalogue of Greek mystery cults, it was only Dionysos and Meter whose mysteries were

transmined by this sort of charismatic; but unlike Meter, Dionysos employed f e d e mantics Like Diotima. Furthermore, the word-family surrounding r e k f l (initiation), which is prominmt in the ,

was "used with a certain preference with regard to

Dionysos.'" It is worth noting that many bacchic cults, even in Socrates' &y, were -

-

"Burkert, C

aspects of the

..

i 291. Budan himselfdoes not explicitiy cwnect the mystexy with Dionysos, but uses them (and thor of the &&US.) only as

indications of the uatm of mystery expexienceper se, while pointhg out the allusion to the 92-93) Eleusinian mysteries m both cases 9. In this regard it is, perhaps, telling that Piato docs not w the word BinLert, puori/pra at aU in the For the Atheniaas. "puuqp~a"quite simply meant the nies at Eleusis. Even the verb fonn of that word ocam m oniy one place (puqeeiq~.210al). IfPlato had

m.

distinguished by their use of so-called bbbooks" of Orphic myth and lore. As PIato tells us himeif in the

m.these books contained doctrines about all of the gods, not just

Dionysos. Bacchic mysteries were thus not restricted to accounts of Dionysos alone, and could conceivably includt Eros. Tantalizingly suggestive, in this regard, is the Orphic creation myth involving the god phanes" who, we are told in other sources, was also called Dionysosz9and also cdled &os?'

This evidence suggests that Diotima, the travelling, mantic, female charismatic who initiates Socrates into the mysteries of Ems, has k e n portrayed by Plato as recognizably bacchic, or dionysiac; at the very lest she is more bacchic than Eleusinian. Considering that her mysteries are the centrepiece of the

.-

the institution of

bacchic initiation rites, with their orphic theologies, becomes one more important dionysiac context of the dialogue.

-

B Review of the Litecature Concemhg the Dionysiac Aspects of the

Of the eleven authors we review hen, all maintain that Plato has used dionysiac

symbols to help him express his points. Some of the authors take Plato to be hostile to Dionysos, others to bc a &votee of dionysianism, and still others fall somewhere in

&y iatended to ailude to Eleusis, it is odd that he shouid avoid that word as he does here. Plato does use " p w ~ p r a "in (156a3) and (76e9). ûrphic fk 60. r,Diodorus Siculus, 1. ii. 3.

Anstopbanes'

693ff.

between. Some also take issue with each other, while several do not take issue where they ought to. We shall, therefon, go through them in chronological order. It is also important for us to be critical as we review these commentators' works, for criticisrn allows us to

cut through ta the most important interpretive issues and thereby avoid superficiality in the presentation. Unfominately, this means that this fiat chapter will be quite lengthy, but in-depth analysis here will prepare us for al1 of the arguments to corne in following chapters while saving us fiom having to go over the same ground again. A brief summary at the end of this chapter will then guide us into our positive presentation beginning in Chapter Two.

b.1) Gerhard Krüger

The earliest attempt to draw attention to the importance of Dionysos and the dionysiac in the

would appear to be Gerhard KrUger's

Leidenschaft,first published in 1939. As the title suggests, KrUger aims to reevaluate the role of passion in Plato's system of thought, and this brings him into contact with Dionysos as an important syrnbol of the Greek understanding of human passion. But if passion is to be considered a positive element in Plato's philosophy, then does that not mean that Plato' s philosophy entails, or at least endorses, dionysianism? WIger denies this implication in a section called 'The

as Dionysian Festival" (86-92):' in

which Plato is understood to be setîing up an encounter with the dionysiac precisely in order to challenge and &ny Dionysos' claim to exclusive dominion over human passion.

' 1am indebted to Jeffky Mitscherhg for an English translation of this section of

book I+of course, accept fullrespo119bilityfor the arguments b d t apon i t 1have not to note the piaces where 1have altered Mitscherling's translation, as they are oniy two cases of insignificanttechnicalities.

Throughout this section,Dionysos and his domain are described in what must be, for Plato. pmly negative terms: dninkenness (W),mimesis and doxa (Hl), btind pathos, "unnaniral" [sexual] desites, jealousy and wildness (91). In contrast, Socrates' doctrine of eros represents a "new, seeing passion" [Krllger's emphasis], by which "the omnipotence of pathos is broken" (90). In short, Plato articulates a higher and prior conception of passion with philosophical credentials, thereby appropnating it as a category away from the dionysiac.

For Krliger, this encounter between philosophy and the dionysiac is played out within the realm of poetry, by means of the contest of wisdom between Agathon and

socrates." He notes the oddity of the -'s

style amongst the dialogues, the way

formal and often poetic monologues have displaced the more typical Socratic

conversation." This nflects the structure of the contest, for he takes poetry and poetrycontests to be a specifically dionysiac medium (as in a sense they are in the cases of Agathon and Anstophanes). By entering into what is essentially a poetry cornpetition at Socrates is submitting himself to the jurisdiction of Dionysos and

this

agneing to challenge poetry on its own t e m . As a result, this inverted image

becomes an

("w 86). of the tragedy-competition that Agathon had won just

two days befon. Socrates (and philosophy) emerge as nctors in this contest not on account of any active denunciation of poetry or of the dionysiac, but precisely by

demonstrating their f k d o m nom the power of the dionysiac. In fact, Krüger suggests,

"

m g e r tbus focuses on the fkst of the dionysiac aspects we identified above, and identifies Aikibiades with Dionysos: ''h the dispute over wisdom... Alaibiades decides:...he cm do thïs because the god appears w i e h W (91). Socraies' attempt to mitiate such a conversation witû Agathon, and Phaedrus' refusai to toieraîe it (194d1-8). emphasize tbis oddity (Kiüger 86).

Plato's task demands this sort of treatmemt: "as mimetic poetry always fmt enchants, the vaiidity of doxa must always be refuted only ironically" (90). By such an "ironic refutation" (89), Plato cm. in effect, show us Dionysos refiting himserf." In other words, the &mg&m

does still exhibit the familias S m t i c method of refutation: rather than

disproving his opponents' theses, Socrates makes them show how they disprove themselves. The other (non-poetic) dionysiac aspects of the Svmwsiurn3' seem to be understood by Krüger as serving to emphasize that the portrayed event is entirely within Dionysos' temtory and jurisdiction. Thus al1 of Agathon's guests are subject to the same conditions and jmisdiction as Socrates, though most of them are not poets either. Dionysos' self-refutation would appear to be a necessary consequence of his mistaken ambition for supreme imperial power, or "omnipotence" (which is, perhaps, why Alkibiades is such an appropriate stand-in for the god). Alkibiades' (and Dionysos')

failure either to seduce or to conquer Socrates nveals the supremacy of the Socratic Eros, which in fact possesses the universal power to which Dionysos pretends. This is equaIly demonstrated by Alkibiades' own admitted inability to resist the power of Socrates' speeches. But the intemal division that this occasions in Akibiades is more than just a personal phenornenon; for Krllger, it is indicative of a Iarger, and perpetual, cosmic stmggle. In effect, Wiger takes advantage here of a well known feature of dionysiac

Y And ~ f b t i n g everyone else pment, as weil. except for Socrates; aU are under the sway of Dionysos, even Eryximachos, whose medicine, 'due precisely to its rationaüty. remains negatively arrested in the pathos of the state of dninkenness" (90). 3sKNger mentions the dramaticlpoetic and the sympotic aspects, as weU as the contest, but uses the w o d "mystciy"only once in passing (92) when cietaihg AUoiiades' speech. It is to be betrinsicaUy dioaysiac. as they w m , bat interesthg that Kriiger does not take as dionysiac: "mt argues that, nonetheless, Plato has goae out of his way to portray this is in any case urimistakable that Plato brought t h symposium out of this occasion into specific relation to Dionysus" (89, Krllger's emphasis).

mythology: the motif of ''resistance to ~ i o a y s o s . He " ~ ~appears to be reading Plato as articulating his own version of this motif in the ,-

where the perpetuity of this

resistance is illustrated graphically by the reassertion of dionysiac power over this at the end (with the appeanince of the first and second groups of revelers) after Dionysos had effectively been banned from the night's proceedings eariier on (176c-e).

Thus, Socrates' victory, though absolute in a sense, is also temporary. The philosopher cm never relax. because the dionysiac is an ever-present opponent: "For just as the cefebration began dionysian, so too does it end Philosophical 'wisdom' does indeed

ûiumph, but only in constant battle*' (90). And therein lies Socrates' tme value to the rest

of humanity: we are in constant danger of losing ourselves to the dionysiac, and many people have been lost so already; but Socrates is unique in his power to resist, and like an anti-dionysiac battle-standard he can rally us to defeat the ever-present enemy -within US.

mger's analysis might seem attractive at fint, if one is willing to concede that Plato and his philosophy are intrinsically anti-dionysiac; one standard view of Dionysos makes it easy to take such a stance. But there is a good deal more to Dionysos than the power of visceral human passions alom, the celebration of whîch in dionysiac religion is what seems so obviously anti-platonic. A serious problem with KrUger's reading of the -

-

"According to tbis motif of dionysiac mythology. Dionysos and his followers are foreign

arrivais whose dismptive rites sp& like wiId£ue, once on Greek soil. In the p s t , many historiaas took this motif at face value and coacluded thaî Dionysos was a laîe (almost post-Homeric)foreign intmsion in Oieece and not reaIIy pan of Heflenism per se; however, archaeological evidence has since proved tbat Dionysos was aIready ai home in Greece in Mycenaean (i.e., pre-Homeric) times. The motif tends now to be undaoad as cepresen~ga timeless aspM of dionysiac expaieme itseE i.e.. tbat the god is typcaUy experiencedas a dangerous onnish, a sudden appeanuice, or an M b l e farce who must, nonetûeless, stili be resisted (Guthrie, G& 172-3). Krfïger does not explicitty mention this motif, but it was a standard view of the dionysiac in his &y and bis account seem to illustrate it perfecly.

ne

,-

which puts platonic philosophy and dionysiac religion in direct opposition to

each other (so that the two are "in constant battle"), is that Dionysos does, after dl,

rendet his judgement (through Alkibiades) in favour of Socrates, no?Agathon. As the judge in what we are to understand is a contest between his own poeûy and its enemy. philosophy, Dionysos clearly gives the victory to philosophy. Nor does Alkibiades make only the minimal admission of defeat that one might expect from an enemy; his praise is lavish, almost excessive, with regard both to Socrates himself ("utterly godlike and golden and beautifbl and wonderful," 216e6-7) and to his speeches ("they're the only arguments which realiy make any sense; on top of that they are supremely inspiring, because they contain countless models of excellence and pointers towards it," 222a2-5). If Alkibiades is speaking for Dionysos as the enemy of Socratic Eros, as m g e r maintains, then this is rare praise indeed. Nor are those the only approving statements Alkibiades

makes. He also describes Socrates repeatedly and explicitly as a satyr - the friend, cornpanion and devotee of Dionysos; rnoreover, he explicitly names Socrates' philosophy

as a type of bacchic rapture: r f i +iloa6+ou ~ pavSa~se KU\ Paqetas (218b3). These features make it hard to see Dionysos in such direct opposition to Socrates as Kriiger says he must be. If anything, it appears Dionysos (through Alkibiades) is attempting to daim Socrates as his own. But KrUger maintains that they are etemd enemies, and that

Dionysos goes on to renew his assault immediately after this spcech. But how, we m u t

ask, can the god so uncquivocally admit defeat and then mount a new attack? If, however, in order to maintain Krüger's opposition, we were to understand these words of

Alkibiades to be his own, and not the god's, we then have the new problem of distinguishing his voice h m the god's. Surely any such distinction could only undemine

the divine authority of the judgement itself and put into question Alkibiades' supposed

role as a npresentation of Dionysos. It appean, then, that Kruger's conception of irony cannot extend to cover these positive evaiuations of Socrates by ~lkibiades~' without threatening the keystone of his interpretation: the identification of Aikibiades with Dionysos. But if these words cannot be understood ironically, then Krllger's contention that philosophy is completely opposed to the dionysiac cannot be maintained. His appeal to the "paradoxicality" of Akibiacies' speech is tantamount to adxnitting as rn~ch.~*

Krllger notes that the speech is dionysiac thmugh and thrwgh, and even suggests that it is to be understood as somehow quaiifying the opposition between philosophy and the dionysiac: 'The interpretation of the speech of Alcibiades will have to demonsirate how something from the nature of the same Eros that is praised by Socrates' speech reveals itsetf in this sphere as well" (92). But on the basis of the text itself, and without any prejudice against the dionysiac. might we not just as easily reverse this statement? Le.: "The interpretation of the speech of Alkibiades wi1I have to demonstrate how something from the nature of Dionysos reveals iwlf in the sphere of Socrates' speech as well"? m g e r has given us no good muon not to do so. Another problem with Krllger's nading is that it seems to imply that Plato is

openly declaring in the

that both he himself and Socrates are guilty of the

The fact that Aiki'biades gives this praise grudgingly, and even declans, There can be no teconciliation between you and met' m the context of references to violence (213d6), might appear to support Kr(iger's reading, but only if tbis is tbe god speakhg and not Aikibiades penonaiiy. This threat of violence is inconsisrcnt with the nature of the praise Aiikbiades gives, and while such inccmsistency is understandable in the case of a human sou1 being puiied in opposite directions (precisely AUo'bades' chunstance here), it does not seem understandable in the case of the god Dionysos himself. And if we mst ideutify the god with one side of ihis incoosistency, then why not with the proSocraiessentiments? ""Aletibiades lets the efficacious might of true Eros become important oaiy with great retuctance and extreme par&xtèality" (91, Krtiger's emphasis).

very crime for which Socrates was tried and executed. Dionysos, after all, was one of the go& honoured by the Athenians in civic rites; in fact, at Athens he was one of the more

important of the go&. On Krliger's account of the ,-

Plato is advocating the

defeat and denial of this Athenian god in preference for a "new" god, the philosophical

Eros is to be praised [instead of Dionysos]: the omnipotence of pathos is bmlcen; a new,seeing passion cornes into power. But we must stress: not in such a way that the new god simply âestroys the old gods, but in such a way that his superiority in the proceedings of the celebration is proven. Just as certainly as the essence of Ems is only now discovered in distinction from the world-go&, so ceriainfy is his power as such already in fact recognized and thus nu? without relation to the old gods. (Kruger'semphasis, 90)

Even more explicitly: 'The authonty of the god who govems dnmkenness will be broken in two" (89). If this is indeed Plato's message then it sounds a great deal like "believing

in deities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state" (m 24b9-10). It is hard to see how Plato (or Socrates) could hold the position attributed to

him here by Kr(iger and not be guilty of dishoaouring the "world-gods:"the Homenc

deities recognized and honoured by the people of Athens. To "&stroy the authonty" of

Dionysos simply does not seem compatible with the pious acceptance of him as a god. Krllger, in effect, n a & Plato to be offking a new theology that is incompatible with, and intolerant of, traditional Greek religion; and hence, as guilty of the charges brought against Socrates.

Perhaps fiom the vantage point of our own cenniry, as we move ever more into the "pst-Christian" phase of European civiiization, it is easy for some to see Socrates as

an enlightened inte1lecnial struggiing to break the bonds of a primitive religion. If so, then we might be inclined to side with Socrates here, against the law that condemned him, and

take him as a free-thinker martyredby an oppressive traditionalisrn. But on the evidence

of the dialogues, that does not appear to be the way Plato saw him. On the contrary, Plato everywhere tums the charge of impiety around and redirects it back against Socrates'

accusen, against the people as a whole, and against the makers of the stories about the gods (e.g., Homer). It is not that Plato is telling us that Socrates was impious, "as he should have been;" nor is it that Socrates was more pious than the Athenians because he

had the one tme religion in contrast to their false; rather, he was the most pious of men because he was huer to the gods of Athens than were all of the other Athenians. Admittedly, this sort of piety would be difficult to defend before the impious masses themselves, who do not understand their own gods." But contrary to what KrUger would have us believe of Plato in the ,-

Plato never makes Socrates challenge the

authority of the Olympian gods per se, just the stories told about them by poets and

priests. It is entirely consistent for Plato to defend Socrates' piety while at the same time using h h as a mouthpiece to criticize important aspects of Greek mythology. But on

Wger's account, Plato goes far beyond any mere revision of Homeric theology, to openly advocating its overthrow in the .-

Somatic piety that we find in

-,

That contradicts Plato's defenses of

and elsewhere. To some,this might

appear to be a pureiy semantic quibble: whether Socrates and Plato celebrate new gods or transform the old until they are unrecognizable, either change would be equally -

-

p p

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the position Socrates is in at his trial. It might expiain wby Piato has Meletus make the much stmnger charge of atheism when challenged by Socrates (&&gy 266). d e r than &king to his written (and publicly recordecl) asdavit that would appear to have cbarged Socrates ody with worshiping dwerent g&. Hui Meletus saick to the written charge, PIato codd not have avoickd wading into apublic à e m o m o t o n of Socrates' supaior understanding of the public gods (the only conceivabk defase) a task that may weil have been beyond him at the the he wrote theor at any tirne. "This is essentidy

-

unpalatable to the Athenian people. But on this slight shift in emphasis hangs the question

of the guilt or innocence of Socrates. The former option, which Krtiger advocates, is in no way compatible with Socnites' innocence or Plato's defenses of it.

b.2) Helen Bacon

The next tnatment that attributes a dionysiac theme to the

is HeIen

Bacon's infiuential article of 1959. Contrary to Kriiger, Bacon sees no great antithesis between Plato and Dionysos, though she agrees with KrKger that the

posits

dramatic poetry as the place where the two corne together. Bacon sets herself the task of explaining why "[tJhelast word of this dialogue about love lis] given not to &os but to Dionysos, the god of tragedy and comedy and wine9'(45)." Her solution takes Plato to be using Dionysos primarily as a symbol for Attic drama itself. Accordingly, we are to

as an indirect statement, mainly through Socrates' mouth,

understand the

about the relationship between dramatic poetry and Plato's own dialogical writing-style. Her thesis is that Socrates is portrayed as a dramatic poet himself, and a better one than

both Anstophanes and Agathon; and his claim that the same person can wrîte both tragedy and comedy is supposedly exemplified (and thereby proven) by the dialogue itself. In other words, the

is both a tragedy and a comedy, and Plato is

declaring himserfto be the very man that Socnites refers to in the end-ridde, namely, the

coasummate dramatic pet. This "last word," says Bacon, is in fact a poetic summary of

as a whole; namely, that Plato's

what has been enacted at length in the -

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"The "last word" sk is refenhg to is the curiok tiddle on the tinal page, in which

Socrates is said to have proven to Agathon and Arîstophanes that "the same man could be capable

of wrïting comedy and tragedy," since each employs the same dpq (223d4-5).

dialogues are a new, superior genn of dramatic poetry.

Lüre Krliger, Bacon emphasizes the contest of wisdom implicitly set up at 175e, and takes Alkibiades to be the personification of Dionysos (4230. However, she

understands this to be a contest of technical skiil in tragedy specifically (424,427), which is why Dionysos must be the judge. By soundly defeating both Agathon and Aristophanes with his Whioso performance praising Ems, Socrates eams his dionysiac victory crown

and goes on to illustrate his supriority e\ren further by Qinking the two pets under the table. For Bacon, Socnites' apparent immunity to wine is an indicator of the favour

shown him by the wine-god (423,427), whereas for Krüger it was a sign of his freedom

from the power of the wine-god Despite this difference, however, both KrUger and Bacon

seem to a p e that the sympotic connotations of Dionysos are secondary, sening mainly to set the scene as dionysiac and thereby to reinforce the presence of the god in order to draw the reader's attention more directiy towards Socrates' encounter with the god's

primary signification: dramatic poetry.

The same thing goes for the mystery-language, according to Bacon. She mentions the 4bmysteries of Dionysos" (424) and notes that Socrates is portrayed by Akibiades as

capable of producing the ecstatic effects of such initiation rites. But she then appropriates these effects for drama itself, effkctively reducing the mystery-Dionysos to another version of the drama-Dionysos: It has been observed by others that the effects of Socrates' "pipings" are essentiallythe effects of Dionysiac pipings, the effkcts of tragedy.....These are the violent emotions that accompany... the recognition scene in tragedy. (425)

Socrates' effectiveness as a tragedian is thus reinforced by Plato's portraya1 of Alkibiades as a tragic hero tom asunder by the 'brecognition"of his own worthlessness and inability

to follow a higher path. Bacon even suggests that Socratic "initiation" is identical with tragedy: "Socrates...whose little comedy of king in love with handsome young men initiates them into the tragic experience of self-confrontation" (428). The whole complex of mystery-language in the ,

then, along with its identification of Socrates

with the bacchic piper Marsyas, is for Bacon just one more avenue into Plato's thesis

about the Qamatic character of the dialogues. But since Bacon wants to persuade us that Plato is declaring himself a dramatic

p e t who, as such, differs only in some degree from the others (i.e., in that he is better at it), she also ncognizes the need for an account of what it is that separates hirn from them and makes him a philosopher." Much of her article is devoted to this question, which she

answers by distinguishing Plato's dialogues C'perhaps lowly and elementary") h m the so-cded "higher dialectic" (416). She develops this distinction using the allegory of the cave from the

m.The dialogues, she says, are addressed to those in the cave; they

are, like al1 poetry, composed of illusions, directed at people incapable of

but able

to comprehend and leam from illusions becaw of their complete subjection to illusion. Plato is a superior p e t because his illusions (his "poems") direct people up out of the cave, whereas the work of the other h a t i c poets binds people ever more forcefully

within the cave (or the world of opinion). Monover, the place Plato leads them to is the "highetdialectic," where they cm then kthemselves of illusions completely. In an apparent violation of the principle of justice that Socrates propounds in the

m.

Bacon's Plato does double-duty as a p e t and a philosopher since, for Bacon, the= would -

''

Bacon ~presentsPlato's aitique as both techicd (i.e., Mifymg the two genres) and substuntiw (i.e.. reconceiving the meaning of dramatic poetry). Plato's phiiosophy provides the basis for the substantive d q u e .

appear to be little in common (in terms of terhnr;)between the dialogues, which operate within the realm of opinion, and the higher dialectic, which operates within the realrn of

iPePsBy explicitly associating the mystery-language in the

with Dionysos,

Bacon has a way of binging Diotima and Alkibiades together in the figure of Socrates, and hence of seeing Plato as "Dionysos-positive," in at least some limited sensd2

However, her insistence on reducing al1 of the dionysiac feanires to facets of a single,

primary signification (dnunatic poetry) also n m s the nsk of erasing important discontinuities within the dionysiac itself, discontinuities that Plato may well k depencling upon his naders to recognize. It is worthwhile bnefiy to point out a few of the Limitations of Bacon's approach. First, her use of the syrnpotic-Dionysos merely as a symbol for the clramatic-Dionysosdenies her access to certain political aspects of the

setting:it blurs the satyric-maenadic gender di~tinction~~ and the aristocratie-demotic distinction, both of which are latent in the contrast between the dionysiac features of

and dnuna. Second, her reduction of mysterycult initiation expexience to that of the tragic "catharsis" (fear and pity) of Aristotle cuts her off from any contnist Plato

Bacon's arguments do not entail that Piato is a proponent of dionysiac religion in any substantive sense; on the contrary, his usc of the dionysiac is restncted to that of a medium within which Socrates' (and Plato's own) affiaity to dramatic poetry can bit symbolically demonstrated The positivity this shows is d y no mon than the absence of the sort of negativity Krüger attributes to him: Le., Plato, at least, does not consider it a diseredit to himself or to Socrates to be pomyed as dionysiac in th* limited way. 43 Tragedy can be said to exemplify the serious and destructiveferninine (Le.. the maenadic) side of the dionysiac and contras&sharpIy with the 'Yun and frolic" attitude of the comcdic and sympotic masculine (Le., the satyric) side (Hatab 127-128). That such a distinction at Agathon's victory in may be relevant here is fiutber mggested by the setting of this the knaia festival (a ritual event specifically associated with maenadism), and by the sharp contrast between Agathon's efEeminacy and S m ' stout masctrlinity (as attested by Aikiiiades). 42

might wish to exploit between public and private religion? And thirci,by making Plato a winning cornpetitor in a contest of dramatic poetry, Bacon effectively identifies platonic dialogue with drama and thereby obviates any radical platonic critique of drama per se. There is a danger that she may be compromising bath tragedy and platonic dialogue by

uniffing them so directly.

b.3) John Anton John Anton's brief but insightfbl article of 1962,"Some Dionysian References in

the Platonic Dialogues," has perhaps had less influence than it &serves. He argues that: Plato has made deliberate use of religious materials and traditions, particularly of the Dionysian strain, to enhance and articulate his philosophical conception of the philosophical life. (49) Plato, he c l a h . was a religious reformer in the broadest sense, whose goal was to clarify and assimilate 'hot theology, but the fundamental devance of the institution of religion

to the whole of the Greek cultural enterprise" (50). His project of using art (i.e., his poetic dialogues) to effect this reform puis him in a long tradition of artistic religious reformers h m Homer, Hesiod and the early naturaiists through to the dramatic poeu themselves.

The mythical figure who symbolically npresents this class of religiously motivated artists is Orpheus, and so Anton concludes that Plato "is much like Orpheus minus the bloody

end, but an Orpheus with inteliecnial clarity and philosophical vision" (54).

For Anton, then, the

s dionysianism has a much larger and more

imprrssive scope than it does for Bacon, or even for KNger. By integrating the dionysiac

"Conside~gthe apparent theological content of the dialogue in Diotima's doctrine of

E m s (whichgzirger took to k a direct attack on the ciry's gods) and its designaiion as mystenes, tbis publiclprivatecult distinction could quite possibly have a d e to play.

39

si& of Greek religion with his philosophy in this Iimited way,Plato is at lest acknowledging the fundamental importance of its outlook and substance: "Plato's Socrates is able to see through Aicibisdes because he is at home with human nature in ail

its primordial Bacchanism and all the soul's ineradicable passions" (53). Anton points out that this contrasts rnarkedly with Soctates' other pupils, Xenophon, Antisthenes and

Aeschines, who dl "made a specid effort to efface 'that disgrace' [Alkibiades] from their teacher's memory" (53). Plato, "the master's most human and imaginative pupil," was the

only one capable of seeing the positive significance of Socrates' fnendship with Alkibiades. Thus, according to Anton, the

contradicts the "piiritanical," and

moraiistic view of Plato that Western scholarship has tended to produce (53).

Far from opposing or trying to eradicate the dionysiac, says Anton, Plato aims to anthropomorphize, and thereby preserve, ail of what is important in his culture's religious experience, including the dionysiac. Anton implies that Plato is an atheistf but an atheist who sees value in religion's "mythical unification and craving for ideality" (52). And so

Plato is actually out to replace the "Bacchic deities" (Le., silenes, satyrs, Marsyas and Dionysos himself) with his new philosophical ideal of "the wise man of Ahens" (52). Socrates is to be something of a secular source of the dionysiac, a mortal human king

who madels in himself, and produces in others, all the important forms of dionysiac

reügious expience. In this way, the

renders religion into philosophy without

"Perhaps 'hhuma
forfeiting the culNtal unity of Greece: the gods, the myths and the practices (in short, the traditions) of the Greek people are not actually threatened by philosophy, but are to be metaphorically accommodated and aftirmed within it. Anton shares Krüger's view that Plato is using the

to articulate the relationship between his philosophy and

dionysianism as a whole, but while Krlfger cakes him to be radical and progressive in this regard (and thus anti-dionysiac), Anton sees him as essentially conservative (and thus

prodionysiac). Likewise, Anton seems to share Bacon's insight that the dialogue's mystery-language has impücit dionysiac associations, which both lends an air of the dionysiac to Diotima's Eros and at the same time lends credence to Allabiades' identification of Socrates as a dionysiac figure. However, since Anton claims that the hinction of thes-

dionysiac

feanires is to effect a broad religious nform via the anthropomorphizationof the Greek gods in the new humanistic, socratic ideal, he also must show how the complex

intemlationship that Plato has set up between philosophy and dramatic poetry actually promotes that thesis. Anton argues that. essentially, the dramatic aspects of the dialogue

are secondary and instrumental to Plato's religious project. For him, as for Bacon, the key to this relationship lies in the end-nddle of the fmal page: the unification of tragedy and comedy. Dionysos is the lone god in Greek mythology who suffers death and nbirth. For Anton. the two distinctive art forms dedicated to Dionysos (tragedy and comedy) represent these N Oaspects of the god: tragedy symbolically enacts the death of Dionysos, comedy his r e b i i . But since Plato's Socrates, as the philosophical ideal, is meant to

replace the bacchic deities, he must embody these two aspects in his own character

simultaneously." The h

a that depicts this humanized fom of the dying and reviving

Dionysos is then both tragic and comic. In other words, the

synthesizes

eragedy and comedy because it porûays Socrates as an embodiment of these two separate principles: is nothing As a synthesis of both the tragic and the comic, [the less than the te-ng drama of human ideas, the drama of life where the dying and reviving Dionysos has been replaced by the ûagic and comic sides

of the philosophical man. (51) For Anton, then, drama is just one of many forms of the dionysiac in the ,

al1

of which are being anthropomorphized together at once in the figure of Socrates. Anton's article notes the diversity of dionysiac material in the

and

takes that diversity to reprisent a platonic concem with the dionysiac itself. However, his article is bnef and limited in scope, and many avenues lie open to him that he does not pursue. For instance, he makes nothing at al1 of the sympotic context or of the mystery-

cult langage, aside from noting their pnsence and their dionysiac character. It is perhaps best, then, to restrict ourselves to raising a concem with this interpretation of the final

scene, which bears on Plato's critique of ciramatic poetry. Anton has, in effect, taken eros

as a model, or metaphor, for the platonic dialogues in that, qua genre,they become a third form that subsumes within itself the two opposites. In Diotima's speech, eros united the

mortai with the imrnortal, or the human with the divine; here, in an analogical sense, Plato's dialogues (and their main character, Socrates himseiî) unite comedy and tragedy:

these are the opposite poles between which the unifjhg element mediates.

'Anton is not explid enoughabout this. But the oniy nason for the new socratic ideal to

un@ tragedy and comedy whüe Dionysos Iefi them distinct wodd appear to be tbat the Dionysos of myth both iiteraliy died and then iaîer was iiterally rebom. Socrates, who is merely humaa. can be tebom only symboücally, dming this Me and before bis acnial death- Socrates, then, unüke Dionysos, mut be portrayed as both "dying" and "reviving" at one and the same tirne.

The problem with such an account (as with Bacon's, which makes the dialogues into a juxtaposition or mixture of the tragic and comic) is that it makes Plato out to be quite favourabIy disposed towards dramatic poetry as an art form. There is, of course, an

ancient tradition that Plato had originally intended to be a tragedian, and had even composed tragedies More he met Socrates; these two commentators see the mature Plato as once again giving rein to his youthful ambitions. But it is hard to maintain such a view in the face of Plato's sustained and energetic attacks on traditional forms of Greek art and poetry." If Plato's dialogues do indeed "synthesize" tragedy and comedy, or even

combine them as Bacon says, then surely that means that they are instances of dramatic

poew themselves, and are subject to many of Socrates' own criticisms of poetry and art in general -despite any 'bimprovernent'' that we may suppose Plato to be introducing.

And then there is the issue of dramatic performance. We of the twentieth century a as just one variety of literature but for the Greeks it was

are used to thinking of h

primarily performance. Everyone is agreed, 1think, that if used as scripts for dramatic

productions the dialogues would generaliy attract very few viewers (even amongst philosophers), despite the fact that Plato clearly demonstrates, in a few places, his abiüty to script great drama? Can we really take the dialogues to be the product of Plato's desire to write an improved vemion of dramatic poetry, and the final page of the

as a self-satisfieddeclaration that he had done so -right in the face of --

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47 In particuk, there are the charges in BeePblif X to the effect that pets must necessarily fpit to represent teality accauately, and that they appeai only to the lower ekwnts of the human SOI& not the rational parts. Even if it should him out that poetry is a necessary form of communication in certain circumstances, it c k l y cannot be the product or the concern of

P~OW~Y-

'Some few passages k m the dialogues have, of course, k e n used this way with some

success, most notably îhe dOPLPe)L and parts of the svrnwsium.

Aristophanes and Agathon (an almost patheticdly petty indignity, as it were, inflicted

upon long-dead cornpetitors for dramatic glory)? This seems to push the interpretation of Plato's contest between Sofiates and Agathon too far -almost to the point of pure selfindulgence. For instance, could we imagine one of the ihne great tragedians actually mounting a production that portrayed, as its main action, a contest between the author himself and the other two in which Dionysos appears at the end to award the crown of dramatic victory to the author? That we have jurt such a contest portrayed by Aristophanes in

was possible only because Anstophanes was no? competing for

that prize and awarding it to hirnself; there was no "conflict of interest." Likewise, when Plato shows Dionysos awarding a victory crown to Socrates in the

it can only

reasonably mean that Socrates' superiority is of a different order than Agathon's and Aristophanes.' When Socrates says, "the same man must know how to write both tragedy and cornedy" (223d4-5)' it seems far more likely that he has in mind what we aiready know as tragedy and comedy, than some new form of non-performance literature like

Plato' s dialogues. Socrates nceives his crown, then, not for king a dramatic pet but for king

somehow different h m the dramatic pets, yet still dionysiac. This argument is im

objection to anyone who takes Socrates' comment to be a veiled reference to Socrates himself or to Plato; but with regard to Anton's own interpretation, this objection calls into

question his central placement of Socrates as the emôodiment of al1 things dionysiac. If Plato's portraya1 of Socrates does not, in fact, exempw a new form of ' b g i c and

comic" dramatic pociry in Anton's sense, then the relationship between h

a and the

dionysiac in the svrnwsium is Wrely more complex than Anton's analysis allows. In

particular, it seems unlîkely that the dionysiac is king treated by Plato as a coherent whole, or unity, in such a way that iis cffects could be adequately produced, or even modeled, by any sort of single individual (like Socrates).

b.4) John Brentbger John Brentlinger gives a metaphysical interpntation to the dionysiac aspects of in an introduction that he wrote for an English translation of the dialogue

the

published in 1970." For Brentlinger, Dionysos ultirnately represents one thing, and one thing only: what he calls the "cycle of becoming" - the endless repetition of birth, struggle, death and rebirth in the life (or existence) of all worldy things. Accordingly. ail dionysiac religious phenornena are to be understood as giving expression to this same cycle in some way, and this dionysiac cycle is then taken by Brentlinger to be the central, organizing theme of the dialogue. Dionysos is thus ma& out to be a natural correlate of the platonic concept of Becoming while Apollo is said to represent the opposite concept

(Being)

-wî th Eros mediating between them. To be precise, Plato is using Eros as a

syrnbol for the integrated totality of his metaphysics, whereby a perpetually shifting and amorphous potentiality (Becoming) is "impregnated" and given temporary form by etemai principles (Being), nom which all natural entities draw their identities. This single process looks dBerent when viewed h m different "ends." From the dionysiac point of view, in Becoming (Le., the Svmwnirun), the emphasis is on me, ternporality and

reproduction; while h m the apollinian point cf view, in Being (i.e., the =, the -

--

.-

-

-

-

--

--

m."

dg 'The Cycle of Becoming in the n i e tr. Suzy Q. Omden. Rut we phce Bnutlinger's accountpnor m our discussion of Staoley Roseu's (1968) because Rosen is famüiar with, and refers to, Brenclinget's 1962dissertation on the same topic: (YaleUnivedy). 'The Cycle of Becoming m Plato's

emphasis is on death, finality and etemity: 'Dionysos and Apollo thus pefsonify two poles, the y h e u ~ gand the s é A o ~of the movement of Ems" (2). The

is a

celebration of the perpetual yéveoy of nature, which is personified in Greek mythology

and religion as Dionysos, and so to Brentlinger the dialogue is very much a platonic of the dionysiac. As an account of the metaphysical import of Diotima's doctrine of Eros,

Brentlinger's argument is insighthil, and perhaps uncontroversial. But his complete identification of Dionysos with becoming is mon problemaîic. The interpretive effect of

this identification is to subsume all of the dionysiac elements of the dialogue into that one metaphysical thesis, so that the

becomes a statement of Plato's rnetaphysics

mrd nothing more. Not surpnsingly, then, Brentlinger fin& almost nothing worthy of

comment in the dialogue conceming the relationship between poetry and philosophy. Foiiowing Diotima's &rivation of the word xoCquy (205a-c), he appears rather to erase any distinction between poetry and philosophy altogether, since both are then just

varieties of what is essentialiy the same creative activitys Though he Qtes Bacon's article, he does not mention Alkibiades' apparent role as a stand-in for Dionysos or even associate him in any way with the god, and instead puts forth first Agathon and then Socrates as the most salient representatives of the dionysiac?'

His bnef "theory of ârama"

with which he ends the piece (a single paragraph) serves to explain away the end-riddle as just one more expression of the futile erotic striving towards Being that is experienced by

all Bccomingcntities:

'

T'US, while Brentkgefs commeutary has a great deal to say about paetry (as the g e n d form of notic activity), it surprisingly says nolhing at ail about philosophy. A coasequence, it seems, is that Socrates, as the more dionysiac of the two, is also the better poet.

Tragedy and comedy are, for Plato, two perspectives from which the human cycle of birth, struggle, and kath may be viewed The essentially comic &ses whenever it is assumed that an absolute value has b e n realized in experience; comedy is the ridicule of this pretension. Tragedy likewise portrays the faiiure of man to achieve his highest goals, but mourns the inevitability of the loss. They are one because both are concemed with the same struggle and because both insist upon its uliimate failure. (31) For Brentlinger, then, it would appear that there can be no real platonic critique of dramatic poetry. Socrates does not difier from these poets in any substantive sense, but

only in the degree of his understanding of the cycle of Becoming and its significance for

human life. Moreover, both tragedy and comedy have supposedly been interpreted by

Plato in a fashion that makes them compatible with, and expressive of, his own philosophy. Compand to Kr(lger, Bacon and Anton, then, Brentiinger significantly simpiifies the number and significance of the dramatic co~otationsof Dionysos in the

,-

and reduces hem to mere inflections of what he takes to be Plato's pnmary

metaphysicai thesis. The mysterysult and sympotic associations of Dionysos get even shorter shrift.

The

as a dionysiac institution is aven one brief mention on the fmt page, in

order to establish a dionysiac context. The aristocratie political connotations of svmwsia and the possibility of a political dimension of the dialogue that these suggest get no

mention, &spite the apparently quite obvious political connotations of Brentlinger's own account of the various speeches on Ems, such as the following, h m his discussion of

Pythagorean medical theory -with whichEyÛmachus begins...taught..that the body's weil-king or health -its wholeness as an organism -rested on the existence of an equal balance between its elemental components....Health is, as HeracIeitus would put it, a unity of what is at variance with itself. Disease and a l l things bad..are caused by an excess of one of the opposites,

which dimupts the prevding harmony. (11)

"A unity of what is at variance with itself" seems iike a fine epitome of the definition of justice ftom

IV (especially if here we see the "opposites" to be arïstocnits and

democrats), but Bnntlinger's insistence on seeing this ali as suictiy subordinate to the BeingIBecoming distinction (i.e., the definition of eros as a metaphysical principle) would appear to bar him from seeing any immediate political implications in the characters and the context of this dialogue. Likewise, the mystery-language, and the psychic tonnent reveaied in Alkibiades' speech, are simplified as examples of Greek religious experience in general (26fJTawhich is then tnuisformed in toto (through a platonic salvage operation) into a humanistic account of religious psychology centered on the philosophical conception of the ~ o o d ?This philosophical appropriation of religious

psychology, of course, aiso plays into the supposed grand metaphysical theme of the dialogue: the articulation and celebration of the ''cycle of becoming." In what appears to

be a more thorough extension of Anton's original thesis, Plato is said to be articulating, in Ems, a new metaphysical religiousity that quite literally is still both Apollo and Dionysos. According to Bnntlinger, Plato aims to give a single, coherent and affirmative account of the underpinnings of his cuIturetsreligious psychology:

By reiateqmting and clarifying traditional nligiws enthusiasm Plato is able

-

to achieve great relevance and inclusiveness for his theory of love the passion of the philosopher and scientist and p e t -tlreir sense that human Me is related to etemal values is argued to have the same mot as the thrillllig processions to Eleusis, and the h t i c revels of the Corybantes. (27)

-

*

WhBacon assimilated the "orgiastic rapture" of the bacchic mysteries to the 'Year and pity" of üagic cathanis. Brentlinger explicitly extends the category to include aU human encountas with the divine, thereby erasing any and aU possible distinctions between varieties of rriigious experience that Plato has at his disposai (27). a Here Brenilinger cites and explicitly foilows Anton's thesis c o n c e d g the anthropomorphitation of Greek religious experience (27).

UrIfomuiately. in attributing "great nlevance and inclusiveness" to Plato's account, we run the nsk of ovasimplifjhg his understanding of his own traditions. The obvious appeal of Brentlinger's approach lies in the very striking similarity

between Diotima's account of the nature of Eros in the

and a dominant

cumnt of thought in the intcrpretatioa of Dionysos by nineteenth- and twentieth-century classical scholars? The closest match to Brentlinger's account of Plato's articulation of dionysianism is perhaps the work of Walter F. 0tto." For Otto, whose work is partly an extension and defense of the account of Dionysos found in Nietzsche's

-,

the god actually npresaits reality as becorning; Le., the name "Dionysos"

represents nality itseif, understwd in its aspect of continuous flux and change. Against

us,for Otto, the ApollinelOIympian gods stand for stable forms opposed to the flux of dionysianism, and in these two (i.e., Dionysos and Apollo) we have expressed for us the NIrange of the culture and the world-view of Hellenism. It is unclear whether Otto

himself was directly infîuenced by Plato's Etos and the

in constructing his

account of Greek religion, but givm the remarkably platonic-sounding metaphysical

-

Y In the foiiowing paragraphs 1rely mainly on McGinty for the histonography of DionySOS-SCholarship. 5S cf.Otto's two cbief books: and Gd. Bmitiinger does not say what litenturehe has consuïted on Dionysos-scholanhip, but the followhg quotation h m Otto desrr%ingthe religious spirit of the Olympians serves COillustrate how closely Otîo's contnist of the Olyrnpian and the Dionysian conforms to Plato's Being and Becoming, and hence how closely Brentlinger's Dionysos conforms to Cho's: 'The Greek saw and b e w : everythmg mdividuai is imperfat and transitory7but the form abides. In it reposes the meaning of ait king and bappenhg. It is the me it is the divine. Everywhere present, it is one with ail phenornena of the sphere of We which it des. But as highest essence and permanent 163). Wmg it stands by itself and high above the earthiy in the splendor of the ether" McGinty writes, "As agahst the Olympians who represemtedforms of Being, Dionysos ~pnsentedthe world of vertigiuous and maddenhg Becoming?'(1667). Mythology is the active agent for Otto that employs the divine f o m of the gods to construct the world of a cultun, or Becoming.

categories in which Otto's (and even Nietzsche's) account is framed, that must be kept in mind as a possibility." In any case, Brentlinger's analysis takes advantage of this

similarity by projecting this modem view of 'Dionysos-as-becoming" back ont0 this plcztmic t e s about becomàng which also happens to be replete with references to

Dionysos. Nor are Nietzsche's and Otto's the only accounts of Dionysos lying in the background of Brentlinger's analysis. Because of his close connection to wine (the chief product of an annual crop), Dionysos has long been recognized as having an important

role in the myth-ritual complex known as "vegetation magic," according to which the community secures its agricuiturai productivity, reproductive mccess, and its very continued survival by means of its religious practices? Brentiinger combines this view of

'Pionysos-as-year-daemon"with the view of "Dionysos-as-platonic-becoming"under the urnbrelia concept of "nature." E.g.: The person of Dionysos embodied the life-giving forces of nature; his worship centered around the yearly cycle of birth. death, and vernal rebiah, and his cult celebrated or mourned the transformations of his being which symbolized this cycle. (1) On these grounds, Brentünger would appear to have a great deal of support for his

reading of the ,

which takes Plato to k identifying (and thereby retaining) the

1mean h m to suggest that the ~ ~ o u u ~ a sian n / ~contrast i o ~ of~ Nietzsche and Otto is, as it were, parasitic upon the platonic BehglBecoming distinction, witb the caveat that for Nietzsche the apollinian is only an illusion that pretends to represent Being (which does not exist), whne for Otto, as for Plato, the Forms are reaL But to conclude fiom this, as Brentlioger does, that for Plato too Dionysos represents Becombg is the pertinent questionof interpretation h e ~ . Perhaps unda the s p d of Nietzsche, Otto or others, Brentiinger presents the hypothesis almost as

if it were self-evident. ~ h iview s onginated with Frazer, was perpetuated by Hanison with the concept of the 'Year-Daemon," and was refîned considerably by N h o n as one of the two main "streams'* of aionysianîsm(the Phrygian).

"old god" Dionysos as one ospect (Le., becoming) of his own new metaphysics expressed in its totatity as the "new god" Eros.

The problem with this approach is in the way that it takes Plato to share one or both of these two modem interpretations of Dionysos. Scholarship on Greek religion has

now, in the latter half of the twentieth century, refuted and superseded all of these earlier attempts to capture an "essence"of Dionysos and to define this god under a single rubric

or formula Even Nilsson's own valiant attempt to divide the god into two separate

"stnams" (the nature-daemon stream supposedly fiom Phrygia and the orgiastic/eschatological stream supposedly from Thrace), had to be abandoned by the end

of his career (McGinty 120-1). The fact is that dionysianism is rife with contradictions and incompatibilities, and classical scholars have findy come to accept that Dionysos is

best understood as a multi-faceted god, and not a coherent unity (Guthrie, J'he Greeh 145ff). And it is worth remembering that this conclusion is based on the total surviving

testimony of the d e n t Greeks themselves; the project of defuing Dionysos has always

been a strictly modern,scientific attempt to impose order where none already exists, except in a single name. It is, therefore, extremely unlikely that Plato was out to define or even to nitionalize this god using a single concept or formula,as Bnntlinger would have

us believe. For Plato, as for all of the ancient Greeks, Dionysos must always have

remained a mdti-faceted god In the ,-

where several of these different facets

of Dionysos appear to come into play, we would be well advised to remain sensitive to these distinctions.

b.5) Staniey Rosen

We have so far looked at four attempts to establish that Dionysos must play a large role in our understanding of the .-

For Krtiger, Dionysos repnsented the

thesis that passion is bodily, bünd and anti-intellectual; to reclaim passion for philosophy, then, Plato had to articulate a new god of passion (i.e., Eros) with aspirations that were puer and more spiritual, and to demonstmîe the supremacy of this new god over Dionysos. For Bacon, Dionysos chiefly represented the iheatre, and by invoking him Plato aimed to show himself a dramatist of a higher order than the cornedians and

tragedians; the

is therefore about a new and better quality of drama (i.e., the

dialogues), and about the difference between thm and pure philosophy. For Anton, Plato was a humanist out to reconstnict alI of Greek culture (including religion) on new

principles, and the

does this for dionysiac religion in particular, by making

Socrates into a symbol for Plato's new secular ideal of the "holy man." Finaiiy, Brentlinger argued that Plato was using Dionysos in the

to help him

articulate his new account of reality (i.e.,the interaction of king and becoming), whereby Dionysos (as kcorning) conttasts and interacts with Apollo (as king), and both are subsumed within the new Ems. Stanley Rosen's ground-breakhg commentary on the ,

k t published

in 1968, does not share this cornmitment to a dionysiac theme; it makes only a mail

number of minor references to Dionysos whiie responding negatively to some of the

arguments we have considered above? Still it deserves consideration hen in this senes both becaw his negative arguments need to be answered. and because the book offers a 'a Cf. 68f.31,34,38,65n14.121,287,289,297f, 324.

much deeper and more thorough consideration of the text than was previously available. Rosen's work has had a considerable influence on much of the subsequent literature, including some aspects of the positive arguments that we shall àevelop below in the following chapters. In particda.,Rosen stresses the significance (for understanding the of an ideological divide within Greek religion, which he identifies as the contrast betwem the Uranian and Olympian pantheons." Second he draws out a large number of political implications of the text, most notably the impiicit and contrasting

political assumptions operating within the various speeches in praise of Eros. He thereby demonstrates that the nature of political authority and community is one of Plato's concems in this work. And third, Rosen puts biography to good use, showing how Plato

depends upon his reader's familiarity with several of the participants' lives. Rosen's insights in these regards can contribute much to our understanding of the role played by the dionysiac in this didogue, even if he does not employ them to that end.

Rosen has two major and nlated contentions in this commentary: fmt, that the chief context of the discussion of Eros is the "quarrel between philosophy and poetryf'w and second, that Plato has consrnicted the

around a central theme of h ~ b r i s . ~ *

AU of the named participants (includhg Socrates), he says. are guilty of committing the

"

The specific cooaection of this distinction to the concept of Eros lies in the fact that the Uranian pantheon exhïibits (monistic) ungmerated genesis. while the Olympians exhibit (duaiistic) sexu~flygenerated genesis. Hence the association of hornosexuaiity with the unorthodox devotees of the Uranians @a, philosophes, sophists and doctors) and heierosemality with the devotees of the Olympian of the city (Le.. poets and traditionaüsts). For Rosen,Plato m u t somehow be both*

"This, acconiing to Rosen (28). is the significanceof Agathon's cryptic predictionat

175%what we have identified above under the heading, ' s e contest and its judge." Rosen sas poetry h u e as excIusively CO-ttcd to m;ythpg as the oniy poss1'ble ground of values and hence of politicai community as such; philosophy is cornmitteci equally and oppositely to Rosen gives no compxelzensivedefinition of "hubn's," but he appurn to stick quite close to its nomial sense of "givbg offense to others," with a particularly m n g ovenaie of ''failhg to confonn to saciety's nom."

"

w-

offense of hubris in various ways, and the accounts they give of Eros help to expose the specinc quality of their hubris in each case. Hubris, it t u m s out, is the product of one's Ems; it can be a good or a bad thing62and in the

Plato is telling us that we

can avoid the bad kind of hubris and find strength for the good kind by expressing proper eros in our üves, and thereby Save ourselves and our city. Proper eros must be a Iove of both humanity and divinity

-a Iove that cm bring these two together. But divinity,

conceived by Plato as something that stands outside of and above the polis and its nomos, is not accessible to the

of poetry, but only to the lpeps of philosophy. Likewise,

of philosophy cannot see value in the peculiarity and irrationality of mortals that

the

are so well comprehended by m P f And while most of the participants emerge h m Rosen's commentary as confused or codounded by their various erotic commitments, Anstophanes and Socrates stand head and shoulders above the rest in the clarity of their visions and their Erotes, and therefore represent errant poetry per se and errant philosophy per se, respectively.By means of these bad examples, Rosen suggests, Plato prompts the

naden of the

towards his omi superior Ems, one that unifies

and

1pops, mortai and divine, and thereby overcomes the antagonism of poetry and

phil~sophy.~ As a result, Plato shows himself to be both a better poet and a bettcr

H&& is. of course, n o d y a bad thing; but to defend goodness one nanually must be "hubristic" towards badnes, and to pmmote the immottal principle within oneself. as Socrates teaches us how to be does. he must be "bubristic'*towards the mortal. Thus, the propuly hubristic: T h e hubns of Socrates is not properly in tune with the generiüed or corporeai nahmof human beings. Oaly the didogue as a whole is an example of the perfect or Platonic hubris" (294). This is exemplified. says Rosn, by Socrates' arrogant and hubristic rejection of the love of hamao. beimgs and of politics - neither of which can possiby measure up to his standard of divine and rational perfectionThe distinction is more than just epistemological~of course. As a distinction between kinds of Ems. it bas to do with the p i o p a aspirations of human He: 'The pets wam against stnving to be a god; t kphilosopbers hsist that the gods are not envious and that the divine We is an appropriate goal for human bemgs. This is the underlying quarrel between Socraies and

"

"

philosopher at the same time, and this is no c~ntradiction.~ Rosen recognizes ody two of the five dionysiac aspects of the dialogue that we identined above: (a) the intcinsic association of Eros with the dionysiac, and (b) Aikibiades' representation of Dionysos in his role as the judge of a contest between Agathon and Socrates. Both of these feahires are downplayeâ, in the sense that Rosen

makes little use of them or of their possible dionysiac associations. With regard to the former, for example, Rosen appears to treat the words "erotic" and "dionysiac" as virtually inter~hangeable.~~ This apparent identification of Eros with Dionysos then allows Rosen to expose more clearly Socrates' complete lack of erotic attraction to

human beings by playing-up the various associations that Socrates may be seen to have with ~ p o l l o the : ~ more apoliinian Socrates appears, the less dionysiac he will be -and hence the less erotic as well. This appears to be the only use Rosen makes of the

specificaliy dionysiac signincance of Eros, but it reveals an ambivalence iowards Socrates' eros that runs throughout R o m ' s commentary: he seems to want to say that

. ~ ~final conclusion, that Socrates' is erotic, but Socrates is both erotic and not e r ~ t i cHis Aristophanes in the Symposiwn" (p.xxxvii, "Reface to the Second Edition"). By using poetry (is., the dialogues) to express superior philosophical iasight, Plato shatters the supposed mutual exclusivity of these two "disciplines." 66 E-g.: 'Th increasing enthusïam, which cornes to a peak in the druniten appearance of Alci'biades as Dionysus, is not intentional but is the sign of the presence of Ems himself' (34); "&istophanes is identifiai as a devotee of the city cuit-goddess [of semai love], not of Eros. The resuIt is to civilize or tame his link with Dionysus" (38); 'The connection between Socrates and Apoiio reinforces my view that Socratesis not to be identifieci with the erotic Dionysiac swnd of the Symposiwn, certainly not without the most ca~hilqualification" (651114); 'Siü1 more SpeCiIically, the dangers of Eros or the Dionysiac are show by Alci'biades*rejection of reconcW o n " (289). Cf. 65n14.297n56. Consider the foilowing passages in coajunction: "If Eros is not the oniy phiiosopher* ic [i.e., Socratesr (238), "Socrates is 'ignorant and then there musc be n ~ ~ e r o tphilosophers mWUess' concernhg Ems. He is 'erotic' in the =se that he deenlightenment about Ems, but by the same tolca. he is ais0 unerotic'' (250). and 'The unsatisfactory c h t e r of the love affall between Socrates and Alcibiades is a necessary consequence of the peculiarity of Socrates*

"

''

only for divinity, would appear to coneadict the earlier implication that Socrates is antidionysiac becmcse unerotic. Surely the appropriate conclusion to draw, considering the identity between Eros and Dionysos that Rosen suggests, would be that Socrates' peculiar m s entails a peculiar dionysianism as well. At the very least we can object to Rosen's

attribution to Plato of the strict dichotomy between Dionysos and Apollo that he appears to share with Brentlinger, and that perhaps originates with Nietzsche. Even Rosen himself, on the evidence of this dialogue, is led to suggest that these two deities are not as

stnctly opposed as this use of them suggests? Thus, just as was the case with Krllger," who also saw a mutual exclusion of the socratic and the dionysiac in the ,Rosen has trouble maintainhg consistency through his account of Alkibiades' positive attribution of dionysiac features to Sarates. To overcome this problem, Rosen goes so far

as to suggest that Aikibiades is simply wrong here, or perhaps even deluded (296-8); his choice of satyr to represent Socrates is "conf'used" and "mistaken:" the icon is "defective."

The other dionysiac feature Rosen recognizes is ALkibiades' role npresenting Dionysos as the judge of a contest between Agathon and Socnites. Oddly, though, Rosen Ems, which cm only desire divine things or beings" (279). E.g., 'By bis cornparisonsto the Silenoi and Marsyas, Alciiiades suggests a ünk between Dionysos and Apollo," and M e r , 'The Silenus-figure has a double-nature @e.. Dionysos & A ~ o U Obut ] ~ these halves arr not a c W y separated"(297). which strongly suggests that these two gods are conjoined m Socrates. Cf. also 2971155, where Rosen refers in passing to a c~ciaiiyimportant liak betwemthese two gods -Orphkm -without exploitmg i t This comection, as we shaU see below, wiil tum out to be one key to the celigious schematism of the dialogue,

gIuger's 9 is one of Rosen's most ikquently citeci somces, but as he does not refer even once to the section we discussed above, entitled "The Dionysian Festival." Rosen is especially approving of Krliger's analysis of Alki'biades' speech (286~34)-For Rosen and Krüger, however, the value-scheme is revetsed: Krüger has Socrates representing the good Eros and Dionysos the bad; Rosa appean to say jw the opposite albeit that the good, dionysiac Ems is Piato's and not Alki'biades.'

-

-

does not appear to connect the two separate moments that, together, define this single action: Le., Agathon's original challenge to Socnites at 175e7, and the resolution of that dispute by Alkibiades' decision at 213dk9. As already noted above, Rosen does

acknowledge that the former passage sets up a contest between Agathon and Socrates, but he dismisses the possibiüty that Plato intends us to take the invocation of Dionysos

In his charge and challenge, Agathon sets the h a t i c context within which the discussion of Ems will occur: the q u m l between philosophy and poetry. His choice of judge, however, shows that he lacks a mie conception of the difference between the two. In the Phaedrus we learn that Dionysus is asswiated with telestic rather than poetic madness, both of which are distinguished h m erotic madness?' Like the pets in the Apology ,Agathon does not un&rstand his own techne: But the consecpence of his ignorance is an essential clue to Plato's intentions: Dionysos is neither Socrates nor Agathon. if it is permissible to identiQ him with any character in the dialogue, the only senous candidate would be Alcibiades. (28) Agathon, then, is simply mistaken in invoking Dionysos, who, because of his association with bacchic madness in the ,

is not qualified to judge this sort of contest.

Resumably, Agathon ought to have invoked the Muses. It is diffiicult to see how this rejection of Dionysos' role as judge is supposed to foUow from Rosen's apped to the

m.The passage in the

to which he refers (265a9ff.)distuiguishes

between varieties of religious madness, or 175e in the .-

m.But madneu is not the issue here at

The word Agathon uses is ''Snphip:" Dionysos is to judge which

of the two is the wiser. The text here provides no reason to assume, as Rosen appean to

do, that Dionysos' role as judge has anything to do with "madness" at ail. Even if we read "Spohia" here in the nanow sense of "poetic skill," as some have done (e.g., Bacon), and

'' It b at tbis point, and on the basis of thh appeal to the -,

Bacon's (29n84).

that Rosen disrnises and Brentiinger's positive connection of Socrates with the diouysiac, in a foomote

moreover connect this (via the h, perhaps) to "inspiration," then still there is nothing odd about Dionysos being the judge of that

-dramatic poets were called b'Aiodaiou

r e ~ v i t a i , "aftcr dl, and it was a @est of Dionysos who presickd over the.tragedy-

competitions and awarded the prizes. Agathon had already received a prize for tragedy

'%m

Dionysos" just the other &y, with no hint of "telestic" madness coming into play.

Perhaps even more troublesome for Rosen's account is the fact that the separation of Dionysos h m erotic madness in the phaednis would appear to contradict Rosen's own identification of Dionysos with Ems hen in the .-

In short, this appeal to the

Ehaednis does not appear to bejustified in the context of

175e. Rosen has

linle else to Say about the invocation of the god, except to suggest that Plato's main reason for including it is to foreshadow the pivotai role of Diotima, who dues place Ems explicitly within the context of telestic madness by her talk of mystenes?

When we turn to the apparent closure of this action in the awad of crowns by Alkibîades at 213d6e9, we find that Rosen has a different account of the Dionysos that Allcibiades supposedly represents here -one unconnected with the telestic madness that he ateibuted to the first. What we find in Rosen's discussion is that the crowning alludes

not to Agathon's words at 175e, but to Anstophanes'

m,and to Dionysos' judgement

there in the contest between tragic poets: Alcibiades, "very dnink and d n g a great noise," smunded by revelers (~upao~oC and ) "mwned with thick ivy and violets," is unmistakab1y portrayed as entering Iike the god Dionysus (212~743)....Aikibiades is the Dionysus of comedy rather than of tragedy; he reminds us of Anstophanes rather than of Euxipides. In the Frogs Dionysus goes d o m to Hades, whm Le.. "Aowever thu may be [i.e,whoever is most representative of Dionysos here], pcetry and philosophy are both brought befoxe the bar of mystic or religious madness. Agathon's language pnpares us for the fm that the main speaker at the baquet is not Socrates but D i o W (29).

he judges a contest of wisdom between Aeschylus and Euripides, giving the crown to the ol&r man rather than to the innovator. (287) Hm, Rosen inexplicably allows Anstophanes to do what he had earlier barred Plato from

doing, i.e., to use Dionysos as judge in a contest of wisdorn between poets. Moreover, there is no sign h m Rosen that these two separate indications of a contest between Socrates and Agathon both refer to the sarne contest. The first indication (L75e), he says, merely sets the scene of the dialogue as "the quarrel between poetry and philosophy:' while this second indication (213d-e) serves only to reinforce a point Rosen made earlier about the undesirability of youthful innovation. But why can this "Dionysos of comedy" not also be the one invoked by Agathon at 175e?It wodd appear that Rosen cannot conjoin these two events because his thesis constrains him to deny that Alkibiades' crown represents a socratic victory in "the quarrel between poetry and philosophy." Rosen has in mind to disquaüfy both Socrates and Agathon fiom that prize, reserving it for Plato (who wins by overcoming the quarnl). This is no small point: it concems the issue of whether Plato endones or rejects socratic Ems, and hence it b a r s upon the core of Rosen's thesis.

Krllger, Bacon and Brentlinger. to whom Rosen refers, all affirrn that Alkibiades' crown represents Plato's affirmation of Socrates' victory over Agathon in a contest of wisdorn

-whatever sort of wïsdom that tums out to be. But to be consistent, Rosen must reject this powemil image of socratic superiority. He does so by separating the invocation fmm its answering epiphany. The one argument he uses to dismiss the unity of these two

actions (the argument we discussed above, pp 54-55, nom the account of maâness in the is not sufficient: if Alkibiades' Dionysos can be identifieci with the judge in the Erpess then Agathon can surely invoke his name to judge the wisdom-contest with

Socrates. A more cietailecl discussion of the role of Dionysos may weli have led Rosen to question his exclusively anti-dionysiac interpretation of Socrates.

Rosen makes no use whatsoever of the other three dionysiac features of the diaiogue that we noted at the beginning; in fact, his analysis might even be said to

obscure them. By identirying poetry per se as the opponent to philosophy in this dialogue, Rosen conceals the special relationship that Dionysos has with dramatic pets in

particular. Accordingly, any use of Dionysos and the dionysiac by Plato to bnng other

aspects of the dialogue to bear directly upon drarna must remain invisible to Rosen's has little or nothing to say about

critical eye. And indeed, for Rosen, the

drama and dramatic poetry; even the end-riddle becomes for Rosen just one more illustration of the general point of the dialogue. Poetry, he says, like the

m,is falsely

divided against itself; comedy and tragedy are examples of a nanual whole that has been sundered into two unnaturd halves, like Anstophanes' circle-men:

The new order recapitdates in surprisingly explicit tems the underlying theme of the entire dialogue. Poetry must be forced by the logos of philosophy to mach a harmony in its parts....The division between tragedy and comedy is a mark of the incompleteness of mortals who, having been sundacd by the gods, cannot transcend weeping and laughter by engaging in both at once. (326) Only erotic philosophy is capable of the transcendence requind to achieve unity, or wholeness. This,however, Rosen would have Plato telling us, is not Socnites' "onesided" Eros,but Plato's own supreme, u n i f j h g Eros. In the end-riddle, then, dramatic

poetry is, for Rosen, just one convenient example of poetry per se. But can h so easily k denied a major role in the?-

a really

The predominance of dramatic

features in the dialoguen would appear to militate against such a reading, but to answer

"The

after all. is unique in tbis regard: no otber dialogue shares the sheer

60

this question we shall have to wait until we can look at those features more closely (CM).

Strangely, Rosen's lengthy chapter on Socrates and Diotima (197-277) contains only a single occunence of the word bbmysteries,"in a footnote?* This is an indication of how little attention he pays to ihis dimension of the text And with regard to Alkibiades' use of mystery-language, Rosen draws our attention only to the seeming allusion this

makes to Alcibiades' famous profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. Plato's point in making such an allusion, Rosen tells us, would be to indicate how Alkibiades' encomium

of Socrates is iike a profanation of those mystenes, but now with Socrates as the divine object reveaied to the initiates. In Aikibiades' warped state of mind, Socrates has nplaced the divine (ir., beauty) -but, still, not the daemonic, for Socrates is cold and unerotic,

like a divinity. Rosen notes no indication of dionysianism here and this denies him an opportunity to lînk this "mystery-language-about-Socrates"with Diotima's earlier

"mystery-language-to-Socrates." But more importantly, Rosen's commentary has ignored an important aspect of mystery-cults that is extremely pertinent to Diotima's doctrine of Eros and to Plato's thought in general: the aspiration for continued life after hath, or

immortality. This aspiration has no precedent in what Rosen takes as devotion to the 44Uranian"deities -but

ii is very neariy the raison d'etre of the mystery cults. This

strongly suggests the possibiiity that if there is to be an ideological split within Greek reîigion that is to k mapped onto Rosen's contrat of poetry with philosophy, then it is the split between Olympian civic cult, and bacchicIOrphic mystery cdt. Dionysos, after

prepon&rance of dramatic feanues, or is as recognued as this one for being, &self,so "dramatic." and the in linlring 207n30.Rosen notes the similady of the phiiosophy sornehow with mysterks; again,h ties th& 6 to the distinctionbetween types of msdness 263dl) to show that Plato does not wish to cal1 phiiosophy itself a type of madness- ~athex,Plato employs mysteries in thk fashion because they can convenientiy be identifid as a source of true ophion, which then makes philosophy possible (2060,

"

dl, is a god who b l m the distinction between Olympians and Uranians; he appears to be at home in both pantheons, and his actual status as an Olympian was always somewhat dubious in Greek mythology. Moreover, mystery cults could exhibit much of the ideology ihat Rosen atûibutes to the devotees of the Uranians. They could be apolitical (or transpolitical, depending on how you look at it)" üke Rosen's description of Socrates, and "cosmic" like Diotima's Eros. In the next chapter we shail have to examine more closely the possibility that Rosen has thus misidentified the theological divide that Plato

articulates in the .Findy, and briefly, it is worth noting that Rosen makes nothing of the political

connotations of the

in general, despite his sensitivity to the problem of

political unity as it finds expression in this didogue. Even more than the other authors we have considereâ, he downplays the dionysiac associations of

m,repeatedly using

the word "banquet" to signify the event and putthg mon emphasis on its food and sex

than its use of wine. On the surface this might seem appropriate, since these participants do in fact eat first and do in fact engage in sexual innuendo, but then make a point of

banishing heavy drinking, at least until Aikibiades arrives. But that would be to ignore the implicit breach of etiquette," the paradoxicaiity of a drinking party without dnnking, and the implicit insult and rebuke to the wine-god," dl of which draw the reader's attention -

"Thesecuiîs were apoliticai or trans-political in the sense that individuais w

m never m îheir rnembership in a family or community; the decision

required to join by any duty arising h to be initiated was personal and essentidy private. Memberships of mystery cul&ofkn blurred or ignorad social and political boudaries, such as gender, sutus, c k s or nationaiity; and of course, they wexe almost always oriented towards H e after death, blUmng the ultimate Olympian-Delphic boundary. This is in direct conhast to the strict and obügatory nature of community-orîented Olympian cuits"Akibiades points tbis out when he jobs hem, a 213e7-8. Particrilady offensive an Eyhachos' words at 176~5-d4.to the effèct that winedrinking is bad f ayou, to which no one raises an objection. That Eryximachos is aware of the sensitivity of his comments is clear h m the way he inaoduces them: kxer6fi o h pot & o ~ e î

*

negatively towards Dionysos -by implied absence where the= ought to be presence. Even more to the point, though, is the aristocratie-demotic contrast that the suggests. If Rosen talces Plato to be concerned here about the unity of the pplis, then there can no more obvious and dangerous division in the OOlig than that; in this, Plato would appear to be in agreement with Thucydides. Given Socrates' obvious anti-democratic tendencies" and the involvement of several of the participants of this

in the

"affair of the Mysteries" (sunounding which was the demotic fear of an aristocratie coup d'ktat)," we surely need to remain sensitive to the possibility that this sort of political contention has some role to play in the dialogue.

AU things considered, we may conclude that Rosen's book suffers fiom neglecting to ncognize and more closely to examine the dionysiac aspects of the dialogue. Most irnportantly, Alkibiades' role as Dionysos has the potentiai to upset, or modify, Rosen's central interpretation of Plato's critique of Socrates. That said, however, a great deal of what the book has to offer will still be compatible with a reading that is more sensitive to the dionysiac. We tum now to a second series of six sources that m e r develop dl of the

above authors' points. Diskin Clay reworks Bacon's drarna-thesis; S. L. Schein emphasizes the political dimension, and rejects the various attempts to establish a dionysiac theme in the dialogue, even more directly than does Rosen; David Sider foilows

up Krüger's idea that the

is consmicted so as to mimic thc course of a

d 6 n < i d v notp6viov npo8ipo~é ~ n npd< v s6 no& n f v e ~ vohov, t o o h ~ tyQ nepi soû pe0f a ~ m 8 ao16v t t o n dAq0fi Uyov cjrsov âv eiqv àq6% (176~5-8):"But shce there appears to be no one hem at aii eager for serious drinlriag, perhups you wiii bear with me if1 teII you the mth about getting dnuil<" (our emphasis). As pomayed by Piato, at -1 Auairades, Phecdnis and Eryxmiachos were aIi implicated in the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries.

" "

dimysiac festival; Michael Morgan argues, W<e Anton, that Plato is a réligious reformer appropriating bacchanism for philosophy; Thomas Gould revisits Krliger's more substantive daims with a psychological approach to the "ancient quami" that also

salvages Plato's dionysiac piety by means of a new account of the 'bue" Dionysos which Plato opposes to the ''fdse" Dionysos of the poets; and, fmally, Daniel Anderson mounts

a whole commentary on a more radical version of Brentlinger's metaphysical thesis about the cycle of Becoming.

b.6) Dislrioi Clay Diskin Clay's article of 1974, entitled ' n i e Tragic and Comic Poet of the -,"

sets out to solve the same problem as Bacon's of fifteen yean previous

(Le., the meaning of the final scene), and it cornes to a similar conciusion:

The ody proper description of the Symposium is that it is a tragi-comedy. Or a new form of phiIosophica1 drama which, in the object of its imitation , comprehends and transcends both tragedy and comedy. (194) Clay, too, fofuses on the action we have labeled "the contest and its judge;" he recognizes Alkibiades as the figure of Dionysos corne to decide the contest of wisdom between the tragic poet and the philosopher set up by Agathon's invocation at 175e, and he takes Alkibiades' decision as both genuine and authoritative. Unlike Bacon, however, Clay is concmed only with the dialogues themselves and has no larger thesis nlating them to

Plato's philosophy more generally. As a result, he is even more narmwly focused on the "drarnatic" import of the

than was Bacon, and allows no mention of

Dionysos or the dionysiac to Iead beyond these strictly dramatic co~otations. Clay adds to Bacon's case. Hm evidcnce for the thesis that the

is

itself a demonstmtion of the tmth of Somites' concluding statement about tragedy and comedy was threefold. F i there was the dionysiac (i .e., dtmaric) victory crown itself, taken nom Agathon and awarded to Socrates; second, there was a cliscussion of some features from the various speeches to the effect that they employed both comic and tragic

tropes, side by si& and jumbled together (i.e., simultaneously); third, there was a speculative theory of drarna supplied by Bacon to account for the essential identity of the two forms." To this, Clay adds an appeal to the W

s section on poetic style?'

Plato's "new form of philosophical drama" has as its chief object of imitation the character of Socrates (198). and it is by means of this single object of imitation that the two dramatic genres are combined In contrasting Attic tragedy and comedy, Clay follows Aristotie's wording in the Poe-,

and says that, in Athens, tragedy concemed what was

"hi& and sexious," while comedy concemed the "low and laughable" (194f.).

Accordingly. it required a great poet (namely Plato) to convey in a single character Socrates -both of these essential aspects. Plato's Sairaes, then, is like the figure of Ems in that he links together the "hîgh" and the "low," and his successful portrayai is thus an example of both tragedy and comedy; the form of the poetry is a reflection of the

nature of its object. By thus overcoming their usual sep-mteness,Plato's dialogues unify these two forms into a single whole and are therefore superior to both of the original

In a sense, this specuIative theory of drama is to be understood as the account that Socrates must have delivered to Agathon and Aristophanes, but to which we (througb "O

Aristodemos) were not privy. 3 W . , for "imitation" vs. b'narrati~n''and "the mixed style." Imitation is Cf. the style by which the p e t adopts the voice and persona of the character he wishes to portray; drama uses this sIyle aimost exciusively. In the Socrates argues that the use of this style can afïect the chamcter of the pet, c a h g hBnto becorne more Wre the portrayed character. As a resuIt, this style Ûj d e d only if the pomayedcharacter is himseif a good W e rnodel."

Basically, Clay has combined Anton's and Bacon's interpretations of the endnddle, in that Anton argued for the simultaneous combination of the "dying and reviving

Dionysos" in Plato's idealized portraya1 of Socrates. Clay also extends this hypothesis further, suggesting that Plato means to posit in this image of Socrates a unifying vision of

human nature per se. Taking his cue from Diotima's broadening of the sense of OPiçSiS (205a-c), Clay suggests that the greatest poets of al1 must be the philosopher-kings, who

can "create" a city that successfully combines and unifies the high and the low aspects of humanity, and who will thereby overcome the divisions that hgment human life and

politics as we now know them (200). That is, a i l hurnan beings and al1 political communities contain these elements of the high and the low that find expression in tragedy and comedy, but iike drama itself, these people and communities are divided against themselves. Plato's Socrates is a vision of what people can and ought to be. Clay thus employs the concepts of

and poiesis to transfom what he takes to be Plato's

thesis on cirama into a political thesis. Unfortunately, since Clay's use of the dionysiac is minimal,he must tum to the Rer>ublic,

aspects of the

m,Philebusand

other dialogues to find a basis for his clairns about these political implications (e.g.. 195,197,200). These concems might have k e n more directly addressed by enploiting the

political aspects of the dionysiac symbolism Plato has utilized in the

itself,

but about which Clay says nothing. However, Clay would appear to have two problems here with disagreements between the symboI of the "dionysiac crowning"and his account of Plato's thesis about

"

shares this thesis with Bacon and Anton. that the dialogues are a supaior form of

dramatic p t r y .

drama, which is supposed to make sense of that syrnbol. First, Clay's c l a h that the dialogues overcome and uni@ tragedy and comedy makes those two forms sound very

much like equal opposites. It is not that philosophy is supenor to tmgedy in the same way that tragedy is supenor to comedy. but that tragedy and comedy are opposing pnnciples that are overcome via the mediation of philosophy which, by overcoming hem, itself still

contains thernea But why then is Socnites, in his coronation, contrasted only with Agathon? Ie., Why does Plato explicitiy give us a contest of wisdom between only Agathon (the tragedian) and Sacrates (the philosopher)? This is a serious objection to Clay's a r g ~ m e n twhich , ~ depends so much on this imagery for its initial plausibility. Perhaps embamissed by the obvious absence of Anstophanes (the cornedian) from this important symbolic action, Clay maintains his opposition between comedy and tragedy by making Socrates hirnsekf into the representative of comedy, instead of Aristophanes (190). In other words, Socrates aiready canies with him (because of Aristophanes' -)

an identification as a figure of comedy. To combine the two forms, then, Plato

need only add a tragic dimension to Socrates -which he does by means of the uagedycontest with Agathon. But this can only make us wonder why Plato would have bothered to includc Anstophailes in the dialogue at dl; a few references to the Clou& would have bem suffiCient to establish Socnites' comic "credentials."" And what of the final scene

where Socrates, Agathon and Aristophanes, alone, are arpuing over the art of dramatic poetry? Are they still wearing their crowns? If so, it would only more emphaticaily stress a A more clear expression ofthis thesis that tragedy and comedy are q u a i opposites, iïke two sides of the same coin, can be found in ffitab (127-8), who appean to be working h m Kerenyi's account of the dionysiac. This would not be as serious an objection to Antoa, for instance, who appeals to a wider

"

range of dionysiac signifies in generating bis response to the end-riddle. The= is such a =ference, in AIkiiiades' speech (221b 1-3). 67

Anstophanes' exclusion h m the eadier agonistic scheme. Plato appears to make this contest of wisdom stnctly diadic, between Socrates and Agathon, and that must cd into doubt whether Piato has really put tragedy and comedy on such an equal footing in this dialogue. The second problem is with the undeniable fact that both Agathon and Socrates

are crowned by Alkibiades. T'rue, Socrates is clearly given precedence over Agathon, but Alkibiades removes only some of the ribbons from Agathon's head For at least the nmainder of this scene, and perhaps the rest of the night, the aigedian and the philosopher Wear victory crowns together in contrast to al1 others present. This is a problem not only for Clay's interpretation, but for Bacon's and Anton's as well. Al1 three of these commentators have understood Plato to be revamping Attic drarna in producing his dialogues,in the sense that Plato is claiming the dialogues can successfully fùlfill the irnplicit political or paiâeutic function that Attic & m a had formerly failed to fuifill. And

therefore Plato's dialogues are to be understood as the perfected form of tragedy ("the tnie tragedy") with which Socrates would replace Anic drama in the

and the

m.But why, then, does Plato leave Agathon crowned despite giving clear precedence to Socrates? He codd have made Alkibiades nmove al1 of the nbbons from Agathon's

-but he

head, and such an act would have agreed with the tone of Alkibiades' wordsM

chose not to. Instead, Agathon's %ctory with words" is ncognized but placed on a whole other order of achievement h m Socrates': -

-

"

-

--

-

-

-

-

-

-

ALkiiiades' words are already a great diminutionof Agathon's achievemen~one might even caii them humiliatmg, so it cannot be that he left somenibons on Agathon's head simply to k polite, Nor can it be said that Agathon's aown represents the false opinion of the majotîty and Socrattes' the huejudgement of the gcxi, and that therefore Agathon tetains his crown because he continues to Main the adoration of the multitude, for it is preàsely the one ''me judge" (i.e., Akiiiades as Dionysos) who leaves him with the crown.

Otherwise he might blame me for crowning you and leaving him uncrowned, whose words bring him victory over ail men at alI times, not merely on single occasions, like yours the &y before yesterday [erUt6v 6% viic6vsa év I 6 y o i ~~r&vraqLvOpôxoy, 06 p6vov xp6qv Oonep d,BAL' a g a . (213e2-4)

In effect, Akibiades is saying that Agathon's victory was temporary or contingent -a genuine victory over ail men, but only for an instant -while Socrates' victory is simply

part of his character, he is always victorious over al1 men.But this would make no sense at al1 if Socrates and Agathon practised the same "use of words," or the same

m,as

would be the case if both were ciramatic pets, for then Socrates' perpetual superiority

would deny Agathon any victory at all (and al1 the ribbons would properly have ken taken away from him). Rather, the implication would appear to be that each practises a distinct "word--'

and that Plato still wishes to express approval for Agathon's

poetry, but to a lesser extent than he approves of Socrates' "poetry." Thus Agathon.

retains his crown as the best tragedian, but tragedy itself has been lowered in esteem compared to Socrates' art -whatever that might be. Such an Unpikation is not

compatible with these commentators' understanding of Plato's view of drama. For them, Plato's supenor art form is intended to supplant the earlier, flawed forms of tragedy and comedy.

This brings us to a more gened di"culty with Clay's and Bacon's theses. To resolve the end-ridclle of the

quires that we articulate Plato's 'Vieory of

drama." This is no smaU undertaking, for it means finding definitions of tragedy and comedy that are sufficiently broad both to explain the well-documented traditional

sepmition of the two f o m , and to justify Plato's comctive unincation of the two. The

issue cannot be avoided, because Socrates' assertion-that the same man can master the art 69

of tragedy and of comedy presupposesjust such a theory of drama to back it up. Clearly. by having Aristodemos alIude to this socnitic argument without reporthg its details, Plato

prompts his reader to riddle-out for herself the arguments that Socrates must have use& On this point we cm agree with Clay that, "If it is to be found anywhere, the answer to

our ndde lies submerged in the dialogue itself' (187). Unfomnately, Clay does not follow his own good advice and goes on to draw his argument h m other dialogues, using connective assertions like, "The poetics of the

poetics of the

and

are fundamentally the

m"(197).

Neither Bacon nor Clay has taken this challenge seriously enough. Each offen a

simple theory of drama with only the slightest of argumentative support, as if Plato's

theory of drama were the subject of no controversy. And yet, this must be the ultimate criterion by which their interpretations stand or fall. Clay's "theory" amounts to a narrow

focus on a single differentia taken from Aristotle: "For Plato, tragedy centred on the high and serious, comedy on the low and laughable" (194). Perhaps this narrow account, which ignores a.Uother possible criteria (e.g., historical, cultic, psychological and theologicai).

appeals to Clay because of the way that it conveniently maps ont0 the higMow social class distinction of the statesman's political "poetry"of city-building, but to leave it at that would beg the question. We must be precise about the logic involved hem Clay is

not simply asmming that Plato's

should count as a variety of ciramatic

poetry; that is part of the burden of his argument. And yet the argument he gives amounts to no more than the claim that the style, in combination

exhibits these same two types of imitative

-as if any representation of the ''high and serious" should count as

tragic, and any representation of the "low and laughable" as comedy? Yet are we to

count Perïcles' funeral oration a tragedy? Or Homer's

m? And what of the satyr-

plays that every tragedian (but no cornedian) had to mite and stage at the City Dionysia in addition to his tragic trilogies? Surely they must count as "low and laughable," and hence as cornedies. To distinguish between comedy (certainly not part of the traditional art of the tragedian) and satyr-play (certainly part of the craft of the tragedian), Plato is

clearly going to need some more elaborate criterion than "low and laughable." Had Socrates appealed to such a simplistic account in his argument with the poets he would

have convinced no one

- not even a dninkard.

Similady, Bacon gives her theory of drama only in her final paragraph, as if to cap off the argument:

Both comedy and tragedy center around man's relation to error. The unacknowledged enor is the cause of a misplaced complacency which is comic, the acknowledgment of error, with its shattenng of complacency and illusion, is in essence a recognition scene, which is the hem of tragedy. (430) This account of drama, also essentially Aristotelian, is much more elaborate and appealing than Clay's bare distinction. but Bacon applies it in an unnervingIy flippant

fashion. Tragedy can k comic and comedy tragic, she tells us (430). Tragic and comic speeches and circumstances can be lmxed and combined fieely to mate works that are both tragic and comic. In effect, Bacon takes Plato to be asserting that there is nothing

mutually exclusive about these two gems at aU, even in their pn-platonic forms, which

"

In other wads. a necessary premis of Clay's argument is not that "AU tragedy is serious," which is certainly accurate. but that "AU serious literature is tragedy:' which seems unreasoaable.Otherwise it simply wouid not foIIow that the counts as an example of tragedy and comedy for these reasons. which is his chief argument Clay seems mterested in applying his premise only to the case of Piato's writhg, ad hoc

makes us wonder why the rest of the Greeks felt they were so very different." Smly we

must ask of Bacon, as of Clay: if Plato's new form of non-performance writing is to count as tragedy or poetry by w t u e of sharing these features she has used to define the respective genres, then why not a whole range of other new forms of writing as well? By

her account, should we not count any discourse at al1 -written or spoken, fact or fiction

-tragedy, comedy or tragi-cornedy, if only it exhibits the appropriate relation of humans to enor? Take Thucydides' m r y of t heW a for instance. It would appear to contain many examples of the sorts of complacency and shattering-ofcomplacency that Bacon amibutes to thc

.-

And what was that war (or most

wars, for that matter) if not a tragic comedy of errors? Could Somites not be refemng to

Thucydides in the end-riddle? If Plato is to count as a ciramatic poet by vimie of these aspects of his work, then do they not earn Thucydides that title as well? We have already noteci, above, the difficulty faced by any interpreter who takes

Plato to be advocating his own non-performance dialogues as a new form of &ma. Certainly there are many philosophical concems raised by Plato in the dialogues that

might profitably be put to use analyzing the form and content of Attic tragedy and

comedy. It is only nasonable to expect that Plato might attempt such an anaiysis himself, even by mimicking dramatic forms. We must be on guard, therefore, against mistaking a platonic analysis of drarna for an attempt by Plato to idenw philosophy, or philosophical writing, with dramatic poetry. Moreover, we must k careful not simply to assume, as

Bacon seems to do, that Plato shares -Mstotle's understanding or evduation of dramatic

"

No poet, in Plato's expexience. had ever wrinni both tragedy and comedy; Agathon and Aristophanes had to be compellafby Somates to admit (tpooavayicci~e~v rbv Zoicpbq 8poAoyeîv. 223d3) that it was even possible for one man to do both.

poetry. But as Bacon and Clay both point out, the fact that such a riddle as Plato has given

us in the last lines of the

ends-offa dialogue so rich in ciramatic content and

"starring" Anstophanes and Agathon, strongly suggests that we are to use the itself to mswer the riddle, and that Eros has a role to play in Plato's theory of drama. The critic who wishes to solve the end-riddle has before her the task of finding within this

dialogue the dues to that theory of cirama, the existence of which Plato seems to be

tlaunting at us on the final page. But we are no
b.7) Seth L.Schein 1

S. L.Schein's 1975 paper, "Alcibiades and the Politics of Misguided Love in

Plato's Symposim," represents a sharp reaction against dl those interpretations of the dialogue that take Plato to be minning the dionysiac in any way whatsoever. For Schein, Plato's thought exhibits a stark and fundamental antithesis tu everything dionysiac. In his own words:

Plato, to judge fkom his works, was a natural enemy to Dionysus and the Dionysiac... His aristocratie background, his emphasis on discipiined reason, on an education and a love which wodd lead the unique individual away h m the particular and the physical to the spiritual and the universal, on ordend harmony in the individual soul, the state, and the universe, indicate that the disorder, irrationality and appeal to masses of people of Dionysus could only be viewed by bim as a dangaous threat to his ideals and teachhg. (163)

In this, Schein represents what might bcst be called "the traditional view" of Plato's

relationship to the dionysiac. In fact, it is as if Schein wanted to adopt Rosen's extreme, anti-dionysiac, ''apollinian" view of Socrates but then, contra Rosen, to put this Socrates forth as the genuine bemr of Plato's own Eros. The chief opposition that emerges for

Schein is not the one between Socrates and ~gathon?'but between Socrates and Akibiades -because Alkibiades so obviously represents Dionyso~.~ This contrast means that for Schein the dionysiac dimension of the dialogue is explicitly political, as opposed to religious (KNger & Anton), aesthetic (Bacon & Clay), or metaphysical

(Brmtlinger). As his title suggests, Schein takes Plato to k using Alkibiades' life as an allegory illustrating the political and social consequences of bad Eros: It has not yet been recognized in &tail how Plato characterizes Alcibiades by means of certain politicdly suggestive language, which gives him and his speech a nlevance not only to the rest of the Symposim but to Plato's political and social thought in general. (158) In Alkibiades, Plato shows us "a type of fifîh-century democratic, imperialist politician to

which he [i.e., Plato] is fundamentaily antipathetic" (167), and thereby tums his dialogue about Ems into a political critique of democratic Athens. Plato, we are told, has superllnposed the image of Dionysos upon Aikibiades because that goà's persona

symbolizes for him all of the things that supposedly foiiow from this misguided Ems -

and that he hates so much -be it sexual lust, or animality, irrationality, democracy, and so on. As for the obvious objection, that it would seem to be incompatible, on Schein's

own interpretation, for Akibiades/Dionysos to crown Socrates and declare his type of

Schein quotes Bacon,Anion. BrentIinger and Rosen, and iesponds dtically to the f h t thtee of these, he makes no mention of the existence of any "contest" of wisdorn between Agathon and Socrates, nor ofAikiiiades' d e as "judge!' 9o Citing Rosen, Schein w8tes: "As has ban observe& AuniLiades is presented iconographicaily and dramaticaüy as Dionysasi but he goes on to add, 'Dionysris is a god who is obviousLy d e m ~ c ("163). "3 Though

speech supreme, Schein simply denies the action any na1 significance:

When he (as Dionysus) crowns Socrates, despite the philosophical passion toward which Socrates' words had once stirred him and the impression on him of Socrates' moral and inteilectual personality, thisjudgment is grounded only in dnmken btionality. (165)

IIIother words the gesture is meaningless, as it mut be if Schein is to maintain the seventy of his opposition: Aikibiades is so very irrational that his actions, as pomayed by Plato, do not even make any sense dramatically.

This "traditional" view of the Plato/Dionysos dynamic, which is represented in our study by KrCfger and Schein, cm perhaps best k seen as the product of a Chnstianizing Western scholarship that has tended to want to claim Plato for its own

while demonking Dionysos. To many commentaton, such as Schein, it seems only naniral for Plato to be anti-dionysiac. But as we shall see in the next chapter, it is not at

al1 so clear on the basis of what the dialogues say about the dionysiac that Plato saw

himself (or Socrates) to be so opposed to Dionysos as these two authors would have it. In the

m,forjust one instance, Plato says a very great deal that is positive towards

dionysiac religion. Schein seems compelled to account for this, and responds that this Dionysos-cult of the

is "quite different fkom Dionysus elsewhere in Plato, and

therefore acceptable" (164). This cult, he notes, is subject to "legislative regulation" and "careful supervision:' participants must "show restraîn~"But we might respond that all

Onck civic cults were officiailycontrolled in this manner, by their very nature as civic culîs. No ûreek city-state was going to o~ciallysponsor cults that thnatened the political cohesiveness of the comrnunity or the safety and morality of the citizens. This, in

fact?is a pmblem in the history of Greek religion: why did this god who prompts a

spontaneous and dangernus loss of self-control in his worshipers corne to be adopted and sponsond by city-states in chic cuits? The "how" of it is well known: Dionysos was tamed in these cd&.And it is, of course, a chic cult of Dionysos that Plato is discussing in the J a s . But this tells us nothing about whether the "untarned"Dionysos of the private cults of his day was unacceptable to Plato in symbol, in principle, or even in fact

-only that in the ided city it would be the statesman's job to limit and control al1 of the cults and direct them towards civic ends. Schein's argument is that the spirit of Plato's

philosophy is unquestionably antagonistic to what Dionysos stands for, but this argument is compromised by its narrow interpretation of what it is that Dionysos stands for:' and by its neglect of the use that Plato makes of dionysiac nligion throughout his oeuvre (and

especially in the

For the

in the articulation of his philosophy. in particular, this question can only be settled by identifying

the dionysiac aspects of the dialogue and then openly addressing the questions of how and

why Plato has employed hem in that fashion. Schein reviews and responds to some of the

previous attempts to do just that? Each of them has mounted arguments, based on previously neglected aspects of the text, to the effect that Plato's use of the dionysiac in actually falsifies the traditional view. If one is to defend the traditional

the

''

The simple fact that Dionysos, more than any other Greek deity, w u tied to an immonaliziag and deifjhg eschatology suggests an inmediate affinity to Plato's thought The additional fact thaîthis aspect ofDionysos was emphasized in mystery cults brings hirn into Unmediate proximity with Diotîma's speech in the Plato's familiarity with Orphirm @nom to Nison and others as an inteUectdized form of dionysianism) is &O weU known. 92 Schein wrïtes, "If this conception of a fundamental opposition between the Platonic and the Dionysiac is comct, it foiiows that several scholars, who have seen m the DionyJiac appearance and speech of Nciiiades a positive, phiIosophicaIly signincant affirmation by Plato of certain key ideas, have underestimateclor faüed to appreciate the importance of this opposition" (164). Of the authors we have discnssed, Schem cites Bacon, Anton, Brentlinger and Rom.

m.

view against these interpretations, which is in part what Schein is doing, one must accept

the burden of refùting the positive constructions on Dionysos that these authors have offered. Schein's response in this regard is not adequate. He does not even mention his disagreement with os en? After briefly summarizing Brentlinger's argument, particularly in regards to Aikibiades, Schein essentially only States his disagreement, before moving on: "Bmtiinger seems to me to underestimate how strongly and necessarily irreconcilable are the Dionysiac irrationality of Alcibiades and the speech of

SocratedDiotima (and Plato's thought in general)" (166). But as we have seen,

Brentlingrr's point was that Alkibiadcs (as Dionysos) represents Plato's concept of becoming, and for Plato becoming is irrational. Should we not then expect the persona that Plato has chosen as the symbol of becoming to reflect that htionaiity? And why

should imtionalify alone prevent us from seeing some positive point (of Plato's own) in Alkibiades' words? To do so would be to assume no more than that Plato is using irony,

and surely that would be nothing unusual. Commentators on Plato's works are îiequentiy led to infer that Socnites' interlocutoa speak aspects of the "right answers," though they

do so in complete ignorance. The other speeches on Eros are themselves examples of this.

Schein's cursory nsponse to Brentünger is therefore insufficient, and shows that he has not taken Brentlinger's arguments senously. He is even more dismissive of Anton, whom

he &ah with in a single footnote. After an assembly of selected quotations from Anton's article, Schein replies: "Whatever this may mean, Professor Anton seems to me

fundamentally mistaken in the view that Alcibiades 'petrates' so as to mily understand

"

Schein m u t disagree with Rosen's assimilationof Dionysos to the piatonic Ems. Cleariy, though, these two authon agree tbat the platonic Socrates is opposed to the Dionysos representedby Aikiibiades.

Socrates" (66nl). His point seerns clear enough: Anton's account is so implausible that his own words refbte themselves, and so no counter-argument fkom Schein is necessary.

AU of this reveals that Schein is depending upon his readers' cornmitment to what we have calied the traditionai view of the Plato/Dionysos dynamic. Schein begs the question

when he asserts that these previous commentaton are m n g , on no other grounds than that they take Plato hirnseif to be speaking, in some way, Chrough the drunken mouth of Ubiades. Schein makes a more serious effort to reject Bacon's thesis. First, he takes issue with

her reading of the end-riddle, insisting that Socrates does no2 in fact, equate tragedy and

comedy the way she says he does (Bacon 430, Schein 164). Apollodorus' actual words are the following: "uai t6v t é p n rpayy6olrorbv iivtu ai ~opq&onor6v &ai"

(223d5-6),Le.: "and that a s m l tragic writer was capable of k i n g also a comic writer."

This sounds very much like Socrates means to Say that the art of comedy and the art of tragedy are one and the same art. Certainly, many translators have phrased it that way. Schein, however, calls this "Jowett 's famous mistranslation" (164)and upbraids Bacon

for foilowing it? The point, he says, is that comedy and tragedy are not arts (t6xvai) at all, for ifthey were then they wouid be made by the same p o n , but they are not. Rather,

as in the h, dnmatic poets are artiess, king inspired by some Muse. The consequence

ac Schein d a s not actuaiiy explain why this is a mistranslation. but his implication would appear to be that Socrates is leaving open, or even suggesting, the poJsibiüty that the art of the comic p e t d a s not hclude tragedy, so that tragedy is in fact a higher, more inclusive ah Why Phto wouid want to show him implying that, however, Schein does not teii us*and he suggests that there is no ûnswec "At this point Agathon and Aristophanes fa asleep. and the Iine of argument is never completed"(164). It seems odd to suggest in tbic way thar Plato would end hk dialogue by so eoigmaiically d&g to -nobUng.

for Bacon's thesis, apparently?' is that Plato cannot be claiming the distinction of "trapicomic poet" for himself on the grouads of the technical virtuosity of his dialogues because in Plaio's view no poetry is technical. As is so cleatly demonstrated in the Ipn,

Schein is saying, Socrates (wiib his empbasis on knowledge and w) simply is not and

cannot be a pet; and so it malces no sense to speak of him winning a poetrytontest against Agathon.. This dismissal of Bacon's argument is a non sequitur, since even if Plato saw Attic drama not as art but as inspiration, it would not follow that he viewed his own combination of the two foms as artless. Perhaps that is to be the reason for Socrates' mm:he possesses the art of poetry while others are merely the ignorant mouthpieces of

the Muse. Bacon's lengthy discussion of the difference between the dialogues and the ''higher dialectic" would appear to groundjust such a distinction. To nfer to the

(as

does Schein): Socrates makes it clear there that what the pets al1 lack, from Homer on d o m the chah of inspiration to people like Ion, is knowledge

of the subject

matter that their poetry addresses. That is why they are artless. But by Bacon's reckoning,

the subject matter of tragedy and comedy is "man's relation to error" (430). If Plato felt he had knowledge of man's relation to eror (and few would deny that this is what his philosophy is largely about) and he described this relation in poetry (i.e., the dialogues),

then we might weli accept Bacon's thesis that he is clairning to possess the single art of tragedy and comedy, assuming that we agree with her theory of drama. She m e r describes the function of the platonic dialogues as Plato's method of drawing people out of the cave, which means that he is employing his special philosophical knowledge of % Schein does not speii it out himself.

79

human error for pedagogical purposes, something that sounds very much like an example in practice. The dramatic pets, on Bacon's thesis, do none of this. In effect,

of

Bacon's position is that, with respect to the nature of " w o r d - w , " the

stands to the

stands to the -.

as the

denouncing rhetoric as artless "cooke&' while in the the 'truc art" fiom the Ydse art of speech."

h the G o r u we hear Socrates he canfully distinguishes

The implication, of course. is that the "false

art" is the "cookery" of the sophists while the "hue art" is based upon a true account of the human sou1 (one of the major concerns of Plato's phiiosophy). Should it surprise us

then, if after describing poetry as artiess inspiration in the h, Socrates (or Plato) tums to be a practitioner of the "tnie art" of dramatic poew, in contrast

out in the

to the ignorant and artiess (but inspired) Agathon, as Bacon suggests?%These rejoinders

make it clear that Schein's arguments are not sufficient to ref'ute Bacon's daim that Plato is somehow contrasting his own style of writing with that of the dramatists by way of the "dionysiac" poetry-contest between Socrates and ~gathon?Nor are they a sufficient

defense of the traditional view. To sum up, Schein has drastically underestimated the potential that the holds for a critique of the traditional view, and so he has also underestimated

his need to respond to ihese previous commentators. He does not recognize the dionysiac --

-

--

-

-

% 1have already argued (against Bacon)above that this is not whar Soctates is doing;'here, 1rupond for Bacon, to defend h a argument against Schein's aaacl. This is necessary because even if Bacon is wrong about the specifics of the relationship Plato is setting up behveen drama and his dialogues, her insight that he is using Wa'biades to articuiate some such relationship is valuable and perhaps correct Schem's arguments would deny any nich insight. Schein continues wiîû another argument against Bacon, to the effect that Aikibiades does not fit the mold of tragic hem because his so-callecl ''recognition scene" is not at aU a genuhe coming to ~e~knowledge (165). We necd not consider the argument in detail because it can be dealt with in the same way as the k t : Le., Bacon could respond that Plato's "theory of dnma" wouid wcessarily miefme the nature of "iragicrecognition" so thpt it fit Alkiiiades' description in and nic6 that Auoiiades was never intendeci to be hgic inthe f?fidiZio~tseme. the

"

implications of Socrates' and Diotima's "mysteries; " and the implicit association of Dionysos with Eros also gets no mention. Moreover, despite his focus on Plato's critique of democratic politics, Schein fails to note the aristocratie political connotations of

w,which fly in the face of his narrow view of Dionysos as a "democratic god? Indeeâ, some aspects of the worship of Dionysos at Athens had strong democratic

connotations, not least of al1 the City Dionysia with its cirama competitions, the origins of which have been linked to attempts by the Peisistratids to curry favour with the masses. But, of course, there is far more to Dionysos than the City Dionysia. Agathon's invocation of Dionysos at 175e is curiously absent from Schein' s account, despite the fact that he ncognizes Alkibiades' role as Dionysos in awarding a crown to Socrates. The

foreshadowing of this coronation so far ahead in the dialogue invests it with far morr signîficance than Schein is willing to allow. On the positive side, though, Schein's article is very useful for drawing attention to Alkibiades' function as a political icon in the text. As we shall see below (Ch4) this is cnicially important, and, as Schein says, had not been stressed sufficiently in the previous literature.

b.8) David Sider

In 1980, David Sider revisited an aspect of Kr[iger's interpretation of the

. .

in a paper with the same title as the section Ernsrchtthat we discussed above: 'Tlato's Symposium as Dionysian Festival." Sider's article explores, in considetable detail, the foilowing hypothesis of ISNger's: As the victory of Agathon was dionysian, so should it ais0 be in a certain sense this victory celebration at which the agon between Socrates and Agathon takes place, for Dionysus is supposed to be the arbiter in the

controversy over wisdom (175e), and it remains to be seen how extensively the course of the synpodum conforms to the performance of trizgedies and satyr-plays. (Wiger 88, my italics) Accordingly, Sider attempts to read the

as an image of the City Dionysia,

writ srnaII. The speakers, he says, tend to represent the various elements of the festivities at the famous annual dionysiac festival: PhaeQus represents dithyramb,%EryxYnachos the Asclepiaia, Aristophanes comedy, Agathon tragedy, and Socnites satyr-play.

Alkibiades, of course, represents the àeity honoured by the event, Dionysos himself. For

Sider,then, the City Dionysia is itself the dialogue's dominant symbolic framework; Plato has used the well hown and largelp dionysiac event to structure his dialogue, and that explains why t h m is so much of the dionysiac to be found in the .The immediate problem with this interpretation is that Agathon's victory was not at the City Dionysia (in March) but ai the Lenaia festival (in February). As a nsult, Sider must argue that Plato makes a fairly elaborate attempt in the

to "bend history

a linle" (50) so that the event depicted appears to fa11 within the City Dionysia instead. The point of this histoncal revisionism on Plato's part would be twofold. Fust, it

magnifies the importance of Agathon's victory and of the

held to celebrate it

(41): a vîctory at the City Dionysia was much more prestigious. Sider's implication is that

Plato found the Lenaia festival a bit too pedestrian for his purposes; rather, we are to suppose that Plato, "wantcd...to suggest in every way possible that the symposium of

(only) forty-five years earlier at most twk place in an age that can only be envied but

"

Tbis is largely on the strength of the faft that Socfates accuses Phaadnis in the (!) ofbang the cause of Socrates' m engaging in speech tbat approaches the dithyrambic (Phaednis2384 Sider 52). 99 1say "largelyY' because the Asclepiaia were not a c W y part of the City Dionysh, mey just happeneci at about the same time in about the same place.

never recovered" (47).

The second reason for this emphasis on the City Dionysia was that satyr-plays appear to have been produced ody at that larger festival (SO), and it is by means of the satyr-play that Plato wishes to uni@ tragedy and cornedy (45). Sider's solution to the endriddle thus most nsembles Clay's ,in that the satyr-play is to be seen as something of a synthesis of tragedy and comedy:

[Gliven the ciramatic (a word to be taken in al1 its senses) setting of the dialogue, we also think of the satyr play, a fom that falls midway between comedy and îragedy .... So rrgarded, Somtes becomes a Werent kind of interrnediary, an erotic figure who binds together the drarnatic realrn of Dionysus. (4.8)

This seems an odd way to resolve the riddle. No one has ever suggested that satyr-plays were, as a genre, superior to tragedy or comedy; the fact that only one swives in its

entirety argues strongly against it. True, they shared most in common with comedy

(humour, farce, vulgarity) and were written by tragedians, which gives them something of a hybrid character. But to suggest that Somites is mwned by Dionysos h i m ~ e l ffor '~ winning "as satyf' over Anstophanes and Agathon and that "Plato is also awarding himself the prize for being that man who did in fact write dnuna that is at once comic and

tragic [Le., satyricl" (43)

-this is both incredible and inconsistent. It is incredible

because every tragedian had to wrîte satyr-plays: such poetic mftsmanship is ordinary and Plato hardly desemes a c r o w for it, even if he is awarding it himself. It is

inconsistent because the portion of the

that supposedly quaiifies as satyr-play

(both for Sider and for Bacon, whom he quotes here) is not Socrates' own speech but - - - p .

lm Siderpu& this hthe smngest tams: bLAikiiiades has a more complex role to play in this Dionysia...m t is tbat of Dionysus bllnseif. He is an epiphany of the god corne to earth" (55). Accordhg to Sider, îhk is part ofPIatorshemicîzation of the event.

Wabiades' speech &out Socrates (as Socrates himself says, 222d3). It is an equivocation on Sider's pait to move fiom Akibiadest identification of Socrates as a satyr to the designation of Socrates by Aikibiades as the superior poet who combines comedy and tragedy, as in a satyr-play. Socrates' speech was not a satyr-play on anyone's account. If, on the other hand, Sider's point is that the

as a whole is what

Plato means to designate as a satyr-play, thereby claiming Dionysos' crown specificaily

for himself and not for Socrates, then why would he explicitly show the crown king placed on Socrates' head? Sider, in fact, says surprisingly little about the centrepiece of the dialogue. Socrates' speech on Eros. The nason, apparently, is that there is nothing in the City

Dionysia for this speech to correspond to. Mysten'es simply w e n not part of the City Dionysia and so, we must suppose, they have no place in Sidertsversion of Plato's

.-

This is especially odd considenng that mysteries are strongly associated with

dionysianism (AIkriiades' description of Socrates makes the association explicit with its references to Mmyas, etc.), and that Sider stresses the dionysiac character of the dialogue

in stronger tmns than any of the commentators we have looked at:

By the end of the dialogue, the reader may be forgiven if he goes away with the impression that the is as much about Dionysus as it is about Eros, and that these gods' respective realms are somehow mediated by Socrates, who..ip shown to be the most Erotic and the most Dionysian. (47) Why would Plato have complicated the picture in this way by putting so much emphasis

on an aspect of the dionysiac that is imlevant to his organizing superstructure, the City Dionysia? This seems even more odd considerhg the major effort PIato has supposedly

made to leave hîs reader in no doubt as to the ideutity of the occasion (i.e.. City Dionysia

and not ~enaia,'~' 43-47). Other pieces of this puzzle also do not seem to fit. Pausanias, for example, seems to be S U ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Uvaguely O U S , associated with tragedy by his personal Hiliation with Agathon but otherwise unrelated. While some might take these to be clear indications that Sider's analogy of the

and the City Dionysia is mistaken.

Sider hirnself chooses to ignore them: he makes no attempt to explain these apparent

Finally, uniike Bacon, Anton and Clay, Sider makes no attempt at al1 to outline a platonic theory of drama that rnight support his resolution of the end-riddle. Rather, he points out in an ad hoc fashion al1 of the featuns of the

that could be taken in

any way as representative of the various forms of Attic drarna and concludes that "In

writing the Qama that is the Symposium,Plato has mingled comic, tragic and satyric elements so weU that they pervade the dialogue, no one existing exclusively in any one part" (48). He calls the dialogue "confused" as to genre, though we might wonder whether it is not Sider who is more confused about what counts in defining a genre. e.g.:

Despite Dover's arguments that Anstophanes' speech partakes more of folktales than of Old Cornedy, 1follow RecHord in fincüng Anstophanes and his speech, with its verbal wit and emphasis on sexuai relations, primarily comic, aithough not without tragic overtones. (49) If "verbal wit and emphasis on sexual relations" is what counts, then Sophocles'

should make a fine comedy. All things considered, Sider's paper gives the impression of king an attempt to capitalize on a very interesting possibility that simply f d s to pay off in the end, despite Sider's quite impressive philological effort to establish that the text corresponds to what we know or can guess about events at that festival. Mer 'O' UnWte the City Dionysia, the Lenaia festival war a public cuIt event based in some sense on an oldcr~o~~irtion with ecstatic mysteries, as the name itself (which refers to maenadic possession) miplies. Cf.Seaford, 262-275.

encountering his suggestion that the dialogue is "as much about Dionysus as it is about

Ems," we can only be disappointed to find that Sider's account of Dionysos*role in the dialogue ad& nothing to KrlLger's original point that he is represented in Alkibiades as the god of the theatre and, hence, judge of the contest. The other dionysiac phenornena we

have idmtified (mystenes,

and Eros) are ignored. In any event, they would

tend to work against Siâer's thesis.

b.9) Michael Morgan

In sharp contrast to al1 of the previous commentaton but Anton, Michael Morgan focuses on the mystery-cuit dimension of the dionysiac in a chapter from his 1990 book,

m, called "Philosophy, Desire, and the Mystenes in the Symposium." Morgan sees Plato as a religious reformer, much as did Anton, but what Anton took to be

humanism, or a hun away from "go&" and theology, Morgan takes to be a platonic and socratic turn away from what he calls "Delphic" religion towards a new nligious

movement %est called Bacchic or Dionysian" (95) which had affinities with Orphic, Pythagorean and Eleusinian cult In diametrical opposition to Sider, Morgan sees the utrnost significance in the setting of the dialogue during the Lenaia festival; "Our thinking might proceed in two directions" fkom this, he says (94). First, the Lenaia was (in name

at Ieast) a celebration of maenadism, one of the major varietics of ecstmc m4riness h m Gnek mythology

-in this case the wild raving of groups of women possessed by

Dionysos. Morgan links this to the bacchic-corybantic vocabulary and metaphors that Socrates often employs in the dialogues, and especidy ta the terms of Alkibiades'

description of Socrates in the .

On the basis of evidence drawn from severai

dialogues, Morgan concludes that Socraies has been consistently portrayed by Plato not ody as a devotee of this alternative religious movement but even as a proponent of it, a

"charismatic" or a shamanistic figure in his own right.Im Socrates is thus someone who

has been ernpowered by this new religious spirit to inspire others with it as well. Plato, however, understands this new religious spirit (as it finds expression thrwgh Socnites) to be none other than socratic and platonic philosophy itself.Io3

A second "pathway" leading from "the Lenaia and its Dionysiac character" is the

connection of this festival with the cult at Eleusis. Morgan points out that Eleusinian officiais were involved in organizing the Lenaia festival, and bat the lesser Eleusinian

mystenes took Place oniy shonly after the Lenaia. Moreover, Diotima's mysteries of Eros involve a two-step process (the lesser and the p a t e r rnysteries of Eros) that is strongly suggestive of the Eleusinian mystenes themselves. Morgan infers from this that Plato is attempting to bring these two separate cult events together in the mind of his reader, and thereby to indicate a commonality between them and to positively affirm the role of Eleusis in the bacchic religious movement endorsed by himself and Socrates: the reügious backdrop for Plato's treatment of inquiry, desire and immoaality, and the terminological vehicle for his expressions of praise for Socrates and dissent h m the Athenian tradition are twofold Bacchic and Eleusinian and the Lenaia, the occasion for Agathon's celebration, reflects their interpenetratîon. (94)

-

-

'O2 This, says Morgan, is the signiiicance of ail the stories about Socfates' extreme oûdity and tmiqueness, e.g., his uncanny and lengthy pauses 'to contemplate:' his pusonal "daemon."his great endurance, his indifference to hiuiger and cold, his immunity to wine, his mfmnces to the Corybants, and to k i n g a smdent of the priesis of Zhoxis of Thrace. etc. '03 C f.97. Though this soimàs a very geat deal iike Anton's thesis, Morgan does not cite Anton and shows no clear sign of king famiüu wÏth his amCcIe.Of the authon we have considerai, Morgan &ers only to Rosen.

By Morgan's reckoning, the issue lying khind this "interpenetration" is, in a sense, political. His nasoning nuis as foilows. The bacchic cults, led by their

bbcharismatics,"were pnvate, and the religious experience they tapped into was wild and

dangernus (as the myths surrounding maenadism stress so clearly, e.g., Emipides'

m;this was the "untameci" Dionysos, and it is to this religious spirit that Socrates is assimilated by Plato in the dialogues.'" Eleusis, on the other hand, while still a mystery cult centred on the personal and transfomative expenence of divinity,was nonetheless firmly entrenched within Athens' sense of cultural identity, and was about as safe and

domesticated as any cult could be. It was also unique in this; no other mystery cult in Greece had been so naturalized within a political community. Eleusis was thus a "tame" and community-oriented variety of the same religious experience represented in the

bacchic cults, and it is to Eleusis that Diotima is assimilated in the .-

In other

words, Plato sees in Socrates a philosophical spirit akin to the powemil human

üanscendence of dionysiac madness, but he is wary of the danger that this power poses to the community as a wh01e.~~~ By showing us Diotima initiating Socrates into the nature of

Eros -and philosophy

-Plato is affirming Socnites' bacchic-philosophic power while

at the same time indicating Eleusis as an example of the appropnate political fom that such a new philosophical religion should take. In the ,-

says Morgan, Plato

shows us how philosophy can be religion, not just for one man and his coterie of 'Yollowers:' but for everyone: lW Thep*ocy of these cults is siflcant in ihat it raises the posnibility of confiict witb public values. By suggesting that Phto C associahg Socrates with this sort of cuit whüe himseif advocating a more civicdented type of mystery d t Qg., -s), Morgan irnpiicitiy accepts Rosen's thesis about Plato's political critique of Socraîes (ai Ieast in principle) Le., that Soaatcg was ''apolitical'' because indifferent to the good of his o m hunÿm community. los ~ e . the . dangerthat such a power might divorce one fmm the community's interests.

-

Eleusis represents the capacity of the polis tradition and Delphic theology to CO-optits ecstatic opponents. Philosophy, the new Eleusis, is the Platonic restatement of that opposition and thereby a Platonic response to the Athenian tradition, (99)

In other words, Diotima's refined "Eleusinian" mystenes of Eros enlighten the "wild and wooly" bacchic Socrates to the possibility of an entire society transformed into their

common likeness. Morgan's most fascinating thesis, that Socrates has actually been portrayed by Plato as a bacchic charismatic, thus poses a political problem to which Diotima and Eleusis an to be the solution: it is the problem of the compatibility of philosophy with the "polis." Ultimately, this is the same political problem that lies behind Rosen's

interpretation of the ,-

in the split that he ernphasizes between socratic

philosophy and aristophanic poetry. It is the problem that is posed rnost explicitly, perhaps, by Anstophanes himself Hi the CIO&, which famously ends with the uneducated "common man,"Strepsiades, raising arms and fire to bum down Socrates'

above

"phrontistenon" and run the intellectuals out of tom. Philosophy, by placing

dl things as the sole criterion of enith, must necessarily put to the test the community of which it is a part. To those who see

of any

(or iradition) as the genuine

gnxind of political community, the critical attack of philo~ophy'~~ cm only appear a dangerous and hostile thmat to everyîhing most sacnd in the M e of the community itself.ImTo the non-philosopher acquainted with the aims of Socrates' thinking,

'06 What 1. S.

Mill (much iater) so fekito~lyd e s e n i as "the dissolving force of

reason."

Though Morgan das not p m e the politicai dimeasion of his thesis in this much depth, it is mtaesting to note the similarity behneen the ihreptof philosophy. as portrayai in the (at least as they appear to the and the tbreaî of dionyshnism, as portrayed m the defenders of tradition. Strepsiades and Pentheus respectively). '07

philosophy might indeed look like the utopian project of a small unorthodox group of people committed to theV own private ideals that cm be pursued only at the expense of the good of society -or

at least, of the good as the public conceives of it.lp

Morgan's proposal that Plato is putting forth Eleusis as the solution, or as the mode1 of the solution, to this problem is the less-convincing part of his interpretation of the relighus refonn that Plato is advocating in the .-

F i , the links Morgan

forges between Diotima and Eleusis are tenuous. The fact that some Eleusinian officiais were involved in the planning of the Lenaia festival does not necessarily imply that the

Lenaia shared any ideological or theological tenets with Eleusis; and can Plato really be counting on his naders' farniliarity with such mundane and behind-the-scenes administrative details, to make this connection? Likewise, it is hard to see how the mere coincidence in time of the Lenaia with the lesser mysteries at Eleusis is supposed to cany any weight h m . These sorts of factors are so circumstantial that they really only begin to look significant if one has akady dezided on the basis of other evidence that Diotima must somehow be a npresentative of Eleusis. As noted already, t

h evidence for Morgan

is her employment of the two-step initiation procedure (lesser and greater) that appears to have been unique to Heusis. In this, Morgan seerns to be on f

i ground; but this by

itself (and it is the only firm evidmce he provides) does not necessady entai1 that

Diotima is king identified with Eleusis. Perhaps Plato is merely bonowing fkom Eleusis

in his construction of Diotima's mysteries of Eros, as a matter of convenience.'" The fact 1990s parlance: Philosophy might indeed look lke a bbcult*' 1.e.' perhaps Plato needs two tiers in his mysteries of Ems for his own reasons, and because his readers are so fPmiliPt with such a thing, a m Eleusis, he puts it in Eleusinian ianguage to make it seem perfiectly naiural, whüe counhg on his portraya1 of Dioiima to make it clear that she does not acaially represent the Eleuskian mysteries themselves.To seüie such a qgestion wodd pequirr a critical discussion of the role of Eleusis in the as a whole. '08 In

lm

that Eleusis was unique in its employment of two tiers of initiates does not mean it had

any exclusive claim to that distinction, such that any indication of two-tiered initiation would necessarily entail the Eleusinian mysteries. Morgan's inference is based on

association only, i.e., on the fact that readers would nahirally think of Eleusis when they read Diotima's woràs. Of course, if Morgan wanted to argue that Plato blends together an

eclectic variety of mystery cults in order to identify philosophy with mysteries in general, but not with any particular one, then Diotima's characterization and language might

support such a hypothesis. But Morgan's thesis demands more than that: he calls philosophy "the new Eleusis" because Eleusis already carries within it the same religious impulse as the bacchic, and for political reasons it is to be the mode1 for the cult of philosophy to the exclusion of what is peculiarly bacchic. We argued in our initial summary, however, that there are other features of Diotima that seem tu clearly mark her out as a bacchic charismatic herself.ll*Either Plato intends Diotima already to embody a blending of the bacchic and the Eleusinian, or Eleusis is not king as strongly indicated as Morgan suggests.

In addition, we might ask whether Diotima reaily is more civic-min&d than is Socnues. To confinn his thesis, Morgan needs to work through Diotima's speech in

detail, showing how in fact it expresses the "tamer," more settleà, less threatening version

of the same religious spirit that motivates Socnites. Morgan's conclusions are based on whot he takes to k the ieligious symbolism that Plato has employed in the -

-

-

"e

NotaMy, Diotima appears to be just as Rosen describes Socraies; she is h m Mantinea, but she travels and offers her s e ~ c e both s to foreign cities and initiating individuals, ef5ectively creatmg an %ternational" cuit ofphiiosophy/Eros with no particdar ties to any city. Tbat is m h e with the MivmaüPngaspect of philosophy, but not with the domesticated and politicaily si& aspect ofEleusis thaî Morgan says Plat0 fin& so appealing.

and elsewhere, but those concIusions entail ideological ciifferences between Diotima and

Socrates. Since a great &al of speech has b e n assigned to both Diotima and Socrates by Plato, we should be able to detect those ickologicaI differences. Unfortunately. Morgan does not cany out such an analysis and the reader is left with an interesting hypothesis based only on the symbols alone, and still to be tested against what the charactcrs actudly

Say. Despite these weaknesses in Morgan's case, his interpretation is appealing. By attributing to Plato the attempt to use existing Athenian religious institutions to validate

his refomed philosophical theology, it avoids Krtiger's problem of condemning Socrates of impiety by setting him into sharp opposition with the city's gods. Even Anton, who

(very much like Morgan) argued that Plato is anthropomorphizingDionysos into a secuiar ideal of the philosophical man (i.e., Socrates), has a problem if he wishes to maintain that

this still constitutes genuine piety. But for Morgan, Plato is quite literally advocating an existing variety of Greek religion, albeit not without revamping it into the higMy intellectualized form of philosophy; piety is therefore not a problem for Plato and Socrates. Moreover, Morgan's thesis recognizes a theological rift much like Rosen's and

pairs it with a political rift as well. but implies that Plato means to overcome this rift by aligning it with the unifiecl, two-step gradation of the Eleusinian mystenes.lL1AU of this promises to resolve a number of the difficulties left over from the work of the previous commentators, if only it is possible to save the basic outhe of this stnitegy in the face of

Morgan does not appear to suggest this strategy, at least not explicitly, but it wouid be consistent with bis thesis to suggest that the mars religion could remain basicaiiy DelpbicOlympian, but be paireci with the hegher theology of the %ue" philosophers by accommodation within the cult as "lesser rnysterïedt Then the bacchic-Eleusinian theology could k portrayecl as the higher truth alnady Iurkhg. iuvisibly. within the Delphic-Olympian. '11

the cxiticisms we have voiced above.

That project belongs to other chapters of this essay, but it is worth pointing out how little of the dionysiac in the

Morgan has ~ t u a l l ymade use of. For

instance, he writes the following when introducing his discussion of Dionysos: Although the god, or better, the daimon at the center of discussion is Eros, there is another god in the not too distant background -Dionysos, whose presence significantly infiuences the language of the Symposium. The Lenaia, a kind of primitive city Dionysia, is devoted to b, and despite our dearth of resources we cm surmise that in the late fifth and fouth centuries the festival included dramatic contests, a procession, a possibly maenadic, ecstatic dancing. Agathon's victory banquet, then, occurs as part of a celebration of Dionysos, a dimension of the dialogue's atmosphere underscoreci no doubt by Alcibiades' dninken entrance. (94) In the space of this single passage, Morgan passes over in complete silence three of the dionysiac features we have identified within the dialogue. First, he calls the event a "banquet,"instead of a

which effectively conceals the implication of

Dionysos in the requisite heavy wine-drinking that is expected to follow dinner. In fact,

Morgan makes no reference whatsoever to the god's association with wine and how it might affect his understanding of Dionysos' "presence" in the dialogue. Second, when he says that the '%anquet" is part of a "celebration of Dionysos," he inserts a brief and

cryptic footnote: "see 175e9." This is a reference to Agathon's invocation of the god, used h e n (oddly) only to reinforce the dionysiac setting occasioned by the Lenaia

Morgan ignores the explicit contention over wisdom that this sets up between Agathon the tragedian and Socnites the philosopher; in fact, he ignores the whole conûast between philosophy and dramatic poetry in this dialogue. It would certainly be wrong to criticize Morgan for failing to mention dramajust kcause we happen to feel that drama is important here; he may have been perfectly well aware of the philosophy-poetry dynamic

in the dialogue but felt that it had nothing to do with his thesis about immortality and the mysteries. However, given his own cornmitment to the importance of the presence of Dionysos in the dialogue, and the fact that drama is one of that god's domains, and that the victorious tragedian invokes Dionysos' name as judge in a contest of wisdom with the

bacchic Socrates, it is fair to say that Morgan has overlooked an aspect of the text that is

material to his own thesis. This evidence strongly suggests that dramatic poeûy (or tragedy, at least) has something important to add to Morgan's own thesis about immortaiity and mysteries.

Finally, there is no mention in Morgan's work of the role that Alkibiades plays as Dionysos in adjudicating that contention over wisdom. Alkibiades' dninken entrance ''underscores" the dionysiac atmosphen only because he is dnink, it seems. Yet given the importance of Aikibiades' speech for Morgan's interpretation, not only of the but of Plato as a whole, one must wonder at his choice not to incorporate this powemil

dionysiac ~yrnbolisrn."~ Alkibiades' speech cornes after Socrates' account of Diotima's, yet Morgan wants to argue that Plato intends Diotima's "EIeusinian" mysteries to "COopt" and thereby conml the raw, "bacchic" mysteries of socratic philosophy. If Aikibiades' striking affirmation of the "bacchic" side of Socrates' character, coming at the end of the dialogue as it does, is further authorized by k i n g the voice of the god

himself, there can be little doubt that Socrates' bacchic power has not been "tamed" and submitted to a higher control, as Morgan would have it, and Plato would indeed then be a€firmingthe rawest of the raw in ecstatic mysteries. Sacrates wodd corne across as having remainecl uwducated by Dîotima, and propaly so, ifthe god hm uny authori~ut

"'

That it was Morgan's choice and not simply an omission îs clear h m Morgan's famr?iarity with Rosen, who explicitly idnitiflesAOoiiades with Dionysos.

an. Aikibiades' dionysiac "voice" thenfore puts into question Morgan's already tenuous construction of Diotima as Eleusinian, and hence the core of his thesis.

There is far more of Dionysos in the

than Morgan has acknowledged,

and not all of it has to do with immortality and the mysteries. Morgan's intezpretation

makes a fitting complement to Bacon's, where the dmmatic Dionysos is dominant to the exclusion of the ecstatic. This does not mean that Morgan's basic insight into Plato's identification of Socrates with bacchic mysteries is mistaken, oniy that the picnire is a good &al more complicated. One cannot affinn the importance of Dionysos for

understanding the mystmes of Eros while at the same t h e ignoring his role in evaluating Agathon's and Socrates' respective degrees of wisdom, or his connection with the institution of the chinking-party and ail that that entails. It would appear that Plato has created an intricate network of dionysiac associations in the , -

so that drama,

dnnk, mystery and sexuality al1 are brought to bear upon each other. Morgan appears to have identified one very important part of that network.

b.10) Thomas Gouid

Thomas Gould first broaches the topic of the role of Dionysos in the Qmp&m in his 1963 monograph w

a e , but that treatment is bnef and sketchy (38-41,57)

and he retums to the topic at more length in WAnn'nit between Poetrv (1990)."' Since the latter treatment is also consistent with what he says in the

former, we will quote h m i t In both treatments, Gould begins with the fact that Dionysos was a god, and that Plato everywhere tends to show proper respect for this god Il3 McuiarIy

in his twenty-third chapter, entided, 'The Tme Dionysus" (225-240). 95

as for all othea, including Eros. Still, Plato's rejection of tragedy in the

traditional conceptions of Eros in the

.-

m,and of

would appear to constitute a degree of

hostility towards the dionysiac. As a result. Gould speaks of Socrates and Plato as, in a

sense, chalienging Dionysian religion: T o be sure, their piety did not permit them therefore simply to reject the worship of Dionysus. What they did was to redefine Dionysus"

225). In short, Plato shows the popularly conceived version of

the god to be a perversion. The essence of Plato's redefinition lies in his complex

psychology, which allows him to explain why it is that people so often corne to desire things that an bad for hem, and to be niled by the irrational and self-destnictive passions that Dionysos is usually taken to represent: hence the connection between Dionysos and

Eros. Gould's argument is therefore much like that of KrUger, whom he cites, but while KrOger took Plato's Eros to be a new god hostile to Dionysos per se, Gould preserves the

close relationship aaditionally said to exist between these two gods (229) and aligns Plato's 'hew Eros" with a correspondhg "new" Dionysos -the "true Dionysos." T~gether,"~ these two are shown by Plato to defeat the Dionysos of popular religion, as

Dionysus, therefore, must k accepted as a true go& like ail the rest, and his defining character must be looked for in the things mortals have always believed about him; but he m u t never be thought to be destructive or dangerous, as was often supposed... Ordinary piety is...cieeply and dangemusly m g , but the god's tnie nature is nevenheless to be found hid&n within the traditional assumptions (229). Gould's analysis touches upon four of the five dionysiac elements we have lt4 Gouid writes: 'Piomysus is an ally of the mie Eros, Plato concludes, the inspired energy that h w s us upward to the divine. He does not work out the precise rriaîion between the two; he rnerely invokes popular associations with both. Although the S'ytnpositun is about Eros, he takes care to fill our nimds wîtb Dionysus &O" (230).

identified in the :

namely, the dionysiac character of "the contest and its

judgetof the W. of drama, and of Eros (229-30). Yet it is drama and Eros that

are ofchief concem to Plato, says Gould: for it is the dynamic between hem that has both established and strengthened a l l of the popular assurnptions about the dionysiac. The

mgic Dionysos generates the popdar Eros, so that Gould takes Plato to be every bit as stringently opposed to uagedy as Nietzsche dici, though not quite for the same reasons: "Poetry" is the expression of the "lowest" part of the psyche, the desire to believe that we inhabit a world that is so monstrously unfair that no one need blame himself for his own unhappiness. That is why the "lowest" drive requins for its food and drink thepdhé of hem religions, initiatory religions, epics, and tragedies. This is "the most serious charge," Plato believed, because6bphilosophy" is wholly in the right and "poetry" wholly in the wrong. (2 17)

In effect, Gould divides both Ems and Dionysos in two, into a gwd, tme version and a bad, fdse version. The "bad" Dionysos of the pets is the inational, destructive god of

tragedy whose existence "justifies" injustice; the %ad" Eros is the force within each of us that ''team us away From union with mie good; it pulls us toward a lonely and selfish

gratification at the expcnse of others, man and god" (228). The bad Dionysos is the god "of the people" (as opposed to "die philosophers") just as the bad Eros is their master.

Such people have failed the test of life, as it were, and are seeking excuses by which to

pardon themselves: What religious people want from their religion is usually the assurance that divinity is not like a just man at all: they fervently hop that it is as likely to reward simers as those who have lived g d y lives. The forgiveness implicit in the pmhos is what they reaily want, not the promise of flawless justice.

(3 8) Consequently, T h e Dionysus of popular religion was the enemy of philosophy because the h o p he held out was false. The ecstasy did not 1st ad,as with Agave, a painful

r e m to the disappointing world could not be avoided" (233-4). The ultimate basis of the "quarrePTbetween poetry and philosophy, then, is that poetry excuses imperfection and reconciles people to a iife of irrationality, stupidity, injustice and failure by telling lies about the go&, while philosophy demands that human beings at least try to live the life of

gods, and holds out the promise of their doing so. The '?rueTTDionysos represents the exact opposite of the "false," such that thei. relationship is essentially diadic. Rather than cowardly shrinking fiom the hanh demands of justice and goodness into a self-conception of humanity as naturally inferior to god and

incapable of controlling itself, the mie Dionysos is to be seen as bbcontinuous ...with the best part of ourseivesTT (237); by strengthening that %est part," we may ourselves becorne godlike. The mie Dionysos is, then, none other than philosophy itself, "the divine passion of intelligence, the vision that unites us with divinity" (237). The means by which the tme Dionysos strengthens us is the g w d Eros, which "actually pulls us to the single goal inspiring all things in heaven and earth" (228). Gould quota Emerson for a clear staternent of this platonic religiosity, as weli as to demonstrate the timelessness of the choice it presents us:

If a man is at hem just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortaüty of OoQ the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. (239)

'"

True justice, mie goodness, m e beauty -t h e r things are within human reach, and it is

therefore iacumbent upon us aii to reach for them. and to accept nsponsibility if we fail. If tragedy teaches otherwise, then it teaches a h

'"

m lie that is destructive to human Me.

~ h source e is Raiph Waldo Emerson, The Address to the k a r d Divinity School W m ed. Stephen Whicher Seniors,"d e l i v d Jdy 15,1838. in (Boston, 1957), 100-104.

Gould's doctrine of the two go& (one true and one false) pits the philosophers

against "the people" in a glaring opposition, and it is this munial hostility that explains Socrates' fate in court. The two gods arr penonified in the text by Socrates and Alkibiades: as their encounten (recounted in Aikibiades' speech) demonstrate, Aikibiades is in the power of the bad Dionysos of tragedy: he is the irrational seeker of corporeal pleasrire who is wracked by insecurity, political and personal failure, and moral weakness. Equally, Socrates emerges h m those encounters as the spirinial, anti-

corporeal, rock-solidman of WNe -as immune to the power of Alkibiades' physical

beauty as he is to the effects of wine. And yet, Alkibiades' description of Socrates in terms of silenoi and satyrs shows that Socrates, tw, is inspired by this same god of "wine and irrationality." The paradox is resolved when we understand that these two men

represent two distinct interpretations of the meaning of this goci, one of them correct and one of them horribly wrong:

The fact that [Socrates] is never dnink, however much he dnnks, has to be reintnprewL He is free of corporeal intoxication, which pulls downward to false gaiety, individual paralysis, and corporeal poisoning; but he is already permanently intoxicated with the drunkemess that is tnily divine. True intoxication is indistinguishable nom philosophicaljoy. (230-1)

These two men, then, are opposed images of Dionysos, and each is moved by one of the two opposed Erotes.

Gould takes advantage of another f e a m of the

to characterize this

contrast fbrthec the two opposed cults of Eros described by Pausanias (18la-d). In

Pausanias' account, there are two distinct go& narned Eros: one bbPandemic,"or common, and the other 'Vranian," or heavenly. Pausanias makes it clear that the common

E m s is the Eros of the people, of the "man on the stnet," while the heavenly Eros is the

one worshiped by the %est kind of people." Accordingly, these "best" people are the lovers who conduct themselves rightly and whose love is productive of the best results: Wtue and true fiiendship. By contrast, the common sort of lover is motivated by power

and pleasun, and seeks only to gtatify his sexual desires regardless of the consequences for his beloveci, whom he quiclciy discards. These two Erotes t u .out to be the same ones

described by Gould, and his wording makes that clear even though he does not quote directly from Pausanias' speech:

In the Symposium Plato gives us his own version [of this contrast]: it is erüs, not ens, that is the energy both of good and also of bad ambitions. If we yield to the eaahly er& we will be trapped in the corporeal reality; if we respond only to the heavenly ers, we will transcend this world and escape aU mortal limitations. (228) According to Gould, the authority of the state is always opposed to the cults of the common Ems and the common Dionysos because of the behaviour and the attitudes they

provoke (234), just as Pausanias describes the customs traditionally used to control the

'Tandemic"Eros even in ~thens? By showing us a true and a false Dionysos in Socrates and Alkibiades, Plato, too, is siding with Pausanias' authoritarian stance against the "cornmon" Ems, but goes even m e r than Pausanias by dmying the lesser goâ any

claim to validity at ail: ''Socrates and Plato demand one law for both parties" (238), and just one god, as well. The false pretense of the people, to the effect that, 'We the '16 GoUld =fers here to the figures of Penand Solon, one fictionai and one reai. but both repzesenting the negative evaluation of Dionysos by those in "authority." Solon is said to have opposed the introduction of the vulgar tragedy-competitions into the city from the country. Godd even suggests, without citing evidence, that the democratic goverment was also opposed to this cuit, but codd not oppose the hold that it by chen had upon the people: "By the t h e the were overthown and a democracy was in control, the ceremonies could no longer be banishd The leaders of the fifth-cenniry democracy rnight privatdy have disapproved of Dionysim celebrations. but they codd hardly bave opposed these evn-growing festivals without comtiag intense unpopuiarity" (236). Gould thus kcomes a proponent of Pîato's supposed indicimeut, not merely its cMcIer, by himself implying tbat ody tyranay couid possîbiy account for the institution of nich a corrupt, and compting, redigious practice.

powerless may ask for aid and h o p for benevolence, but we cannot share all of our d e r ' s goals" (238). must be taken away from them;and yet its source is to be found in all of the most authoritative voices of Greek culture

-the pets.

Gould, then, is very much in agreement with Krllger's and Schein's anti-dionysiac interpretations of the ,-

but wiih the added sophistication rhat the Dionysos

those two critics took Plato to be opposing was in fact not the true, but a false, Dionysos. This has the curious consequence that Dionysos himself becomes as "puritanical"(to use Anton's word) as Western scholan have generally taken Plato to be. Still, that might well

be what Plato had in mind. We must achowledge the value of Gould's thorough and effective interpretation of Plato's psychology and its use in explaining Plato's cnticisms of the tragedy of his &y; but with regard to Plato's precise view of Dionysos and the dionysiac. Gould underestimates one very important dimension of Plato's treatment: ic., the mystery-cult dimension developed so well by ~ o r g a n . "Gould ~ acknowledges, briefly, that Plato uses the metaphor of ecstatic mystery-cult initiation to describe the "highest philosophical rewelation" (238). and Gould takes this to be one more facet of Plato's "tme Dionysos:"

In the Republic both visions are implied [i.e., the ecstatic and the natudistic], the types of excellence and the types of physical objects as well. Indeed. it is because Plato insists on packing both visions into the sarne, strained image that the Line and the Cave are so difficult to interpret. The desire to link the two, however, is the key to Plato's version of Dionysiac ecstasy. (239) But at the same t h e Gould goes out of his way to distinguish this ecstasy h m the cult practices within which it was always situated: the nenzied music, dance. drunke~messand sexuality of the dionysiac Morgan's accorinf in

(or exclusive cult). He does so by arnalgamating the

. .

was published the same year as Gould's (1990).

101

ecstatic fhiaSPSof the mystery-cul6 with the theatre-cult of the false Dionysos: m h e ecstatic bacchants believed their leader to be Dionysus. But the dancers in a tragedy provided for fifth-century Athenians an even more visible and easily realized example of the divine thEasos. And there is yet anoîher thimos in al1 theaters, mdem as well as ancient: the audience....The more effective the play, the more complete the submergence of individual moral beings into a submissive thiasos. (236) This amalgamaiion by Gould is a mistake, even if Greek theatre performance actually originated out of bacchic rnystery-cult practices as, for instance, Burkm and Seaford have argued?' Gould relies on the

of Euripicies to tie these two separate phenomena

together for him: the play is a drainatic portrayai of the god of the dionysiac cult-forms under the aegis of one god

m,two equally

-the false Dionysos. A clue to the error

involved hem is Socnites' own fate: Gould has argued that "authority" is always hostile to the fdse Dionysos, yet it is Socrates, the follower of the supposedly %ue" Dionysos, who

is tried and sentenced to kath by the state, not Euripides. Dionysiac ecstacy does not happen to individuals atone by themselves; it happens to gro~ps.~'~ The

was

unified pncisely by its communal expenence of ecstasy, and this gave it a type of autonomy that set it apart h m the rest of the cornmunity. The authority of the state was not thmateneci by the tame Dionysos of the publicly sponsored theatre cult, as Gould

would have it, but by the private leaders. And it is with the

mystery-cult Ianguage of the .-

with their roguish and b'uniicenced"charismatic

that S m t e s is most closely identified by means of the

Allcibiades even speaks of Soctates in precisely

these terms: bis fellow "make-bite victims" are none other than a -,

an exclusive

See Taibot for a w î e w of the evidmce; Fnednch argues for the separatena of theaaical benornena despite any such ritual origin. '"This awith Diotima's doctrine that philosophicalecstasy O C ~ ~ KdS y in IL'

conversation with others.

group distinguished by their simila.experience of divine pathps.

Euripides

is a public-cuit poxtrayal of a private-cult experience, and that

is a complication that Gould overlooks. As a result, Gould has missed an important contrast within dionysiac religion that Plato is likely using to his advantage in the

.-

F î t and foremost, it suggests that Gould's own division of Dionysos into

tme and false images may well map ont0 the privatefpublic cult distinction, with the apparent consequence that it is the public cult itself, as a whole, that would then be "false" and have to go. While Gould wouid likely approve of that thesis, and perhaps even view it as a refinement of his own,it also carries with it a problem: the

is

intnnsically private and exclusive. If Plato's "tnie" Dionysos is indeed to be aligned with

mystery-cult practice, and the alternative is not oniy false but "bad," then that would

appear to entail the abolition of public religion per se -perhaps even the actual denial of religion to "the people." Thus, while we may well agree with Gould that an opposition is

king set up by Plato here wirhin dionysiac religion, we must doubt whether the "lesser" half is being so roundly condemed by Plato as he asserts.

b.11) Daniel Anderson

Masks are one important feahire of dionysiac cult that we did not identiQ as a dionysiac aspect of the

above because they do not obvioudy corne into play

at all in the dialogue. Nonetheless, one commentatm, Daniel Anderson, has recently published a N1-leagth commentary

ofDiODySQS. 1993) that takes the

to be constructed mund a central but implicir dionysiac theme of masks:

''Althou& a theme of masks is not mentioned explicitiy in the Symposium. such a theme

does seem to loom ever in the backgrounà" (10). Dionysos can in a sense be cailed "the god of rnasks" because much of his representation explicitly took the form of masks. For

instance. unlike other cults (especially of the Olympian go&) that tended to be focused on cult-statues, many cul&of Dionysos centered on a b a n poIe or a tree adorned with a mask

of the god. The Greek theatre aiso famously employed character masks for al1 of the actors; it has been suggested that this was no mere expedient of the stage, but was tied in originally to the ~presentationof the god by an actor wearing a mask of Dionysos.

Modern scholars have seen in the "mask of Dionysos" an essential part of the god's meaning within Greek culture: i.e., the mask is important for Dionysos because, unlike other go&, he stands for an infinite, amorphous, undefined, subliminal force. The presence of such an entity cannot accurately be "portrayed" at dl, especially by a particular image; masks,however, by their very nature, indicate their own falsehood, and point to what is concealed behind hem. Therefore the mask can be the only accurate

repnsentation of this god: it is not thai Dionysos remains hidden to mankind, but that he

can manifest himself only as an appearance of something that he is not. To quote Anderson dirrctly:

Symbolically then, Dionysos was the god of masks. But as god of masks his essence is to be masked; there can be no Dionysos unmasked. Each living thing is a mask of Dionysos. As aii living things, he is no one thing in particdar. He has no individuality, no character peculiarly his own, so taking all the masks off Dionysos, like taking all the peelings off an onion, wodd leave nothing behind. (8) This mo&rn interpretationof the god is very much re1ated to his definition as dan vital

-the view that is also characteristic of Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian, and that we encountered already in Brentlinger's interpretationof the .-

According to Anderson, Plato appües this symbolism of masks pnmarily in two directions, both essentially epistemological but with similar metaphysical consequences.

AU of the dionysiac features of the dialogue that Anderson notes are then taken as k t i n g our attention in these two directions. First, there is the issue of self-knowledge, which guides Anderson's interpretation of the various speeches on Eros. In each case, except for Socrates, we are to understand that the speaker is mistakenly attempting to identiQ himself with a particular mask,not aware that human growth and learning

involves the continuous removal of one's masks. Self-knowledge cornes by shedding one's masks to reveal the new ones beneath:

Tme self-knowledgeon these terms is a pursuit, not a discovery, and it is grounded in the dization that one cannot know even that there is a self to be known. NI one can discover -either in oneself or in another - is a mask. Although exactly what t h mask happens to be may be important, there is an underlying suggestion that for humans, to be is to grow, and any mask may therefore be fleeting. (10) The speakers exhibit a failure of seif-knowledge in thinking that ihey can define precisely what and who they unchangingly are, for in defining ETOS each is acnially defining himself. Moreover, this failure of seSknowledge actually prevents them fiom achieving the genuine love of others that each so desires; genuine love involves a truly reciprocal

assistance in removing each other's masks, or in helping each other to grow as persons.

This most strikingly shows-up the self-love and megalornania of Alkibiades, for in portraying him as Dionysos, Plato is actually portraying him as portraying himserfas the

The second fashion in which this theme of masks is applied by Plato is with regard to the Theory of Forms. Anderson foilows Brentlinger closely in ideniifjing

Dionysos with Plato's concept of Becoming, but he disagrees with Brentlinger that Plato means to balance this with apollinian Being and incorporate both into Eros. The apoilinian, with its concept of unchanging Being, says Anderson, is simply not compatible with Dionysos and Becoming. Rather, the desire for immortality that Diotima makes central to her concept of Eros is actually the desire for everlusting Becoming. Dionysos represents life; Apollo only death; and Eros is thus entirely dionysiac. This has consequences for our understanding of Plato's theory of knowledge. The aspiration for unchanging and absolute mith, beauty and justice that is expressed in the Theory of

Forms is revealed by Anderson's account to be entuely mistaken and un-platonic.

"T'mth,"for Plato, is itself no more than a mask of Dionysos, which is to Say it is purely dialecticd - a temporary appearance destined to be overcome and replaced by new tniths. As with the b'onion" that Anderson used to describe Dionysos himself, there is no

ultimate "kemel" of truth waiting to be discovered as successive layers of opinion are seipped away, only more layers. For Anderson, this theory of truth emerges mainly nom

Diotima's teaching on Eros, but it is supported by the many dionysiac facets of the dialogue that work together to refute and repel the apoilinian. What the

gives

us then, on Anderson's account, is a very unorthodox view of Plato's philosophy: a theory of miththat is essentially pragmatic, coupled with a view of reality that is "radically Heracleitean" (69). In what is probably a gwd statement of his overail thesis, Anderson

The...iikely conclusion seems to be that plat01 was presenting a process view of the worId -though in a rudimentary form -and that he introduced the pure form of beauty for some other reason. (86)

The "otherreason" tums out to be dialectical itself. The Theory of Fonns is offered up by

Plato in order that we rnay recoil nom it. It is one of a pair of concepts of immortality (etemity vs. everlasting temporality), and is provided -and argumentatively supported by Plato through Socrates in the dialogues -so that we may understand its full

implications and its imlevance to us- Because we are mortal beings, both its kind of irnmortaiity and its kind of knowledge are inappropriate for us. Philosophy,then, has

nothing to do with Being and nothing to do with truth, in any absolute sense: it is

criticism for the sake of criticism, dialectic for the sake of dialectic.'" When presented with such a controversial thesis, we might rightly demand a great deal of evidence for the interpretation of the dialogue itself as well as, perhaps, some

effort to show how this is compatible with what Plato wrote elsewhere about the Forms. Yet the so-called "themeof masks" is only very weakly attested within the text of the

.-

The word "mask" (xpdooxov) occurs in ody a single relevant usage in the

dialogue, and there it seems more to count against Anderson's thesis than in favour of it.I2' Most surprisingly, Plato does not use the word to describe the entrance of Alkibiades (when he looked most like Dionysos). which Anderson's thesis surely should demand.

Even more apropos would be Wribiades' use of the term when he reveals Socrates' mie

nature, what Socrates "really look like insidef' this scene, ai least, is so obviously an 44unmasking"of Socrates that it seems tailor-made for Anderson's thesis, yet the word 1Say, "forthe sake of dialectic," because Anderson malw it clear that there is n o goal impücit in thÛ process aside a m the pmass itself. One could reasonably object that b i s makes Plato out to k as much of a pessimist, or a nihitist, as Schopenhauer (!). But then, perhaps this should not nirpr*e us, given the affmty between Anderson's conception ofDionysos and

Nietzsche's in the of T The w o d o c c u r s z phces,four of thcm in Aristophanes9description of the circlemen. But at 21Ia6, Diotima is descriiing the philosopher's expriaice of Beauty itself, and she says, 'hot again will aiû beauty appear to him like the beauty of a face or han& or anything corporeai [OU& a6 $avtau8fiuera~a k Q zb ~aAbvoiov np6aon6v n0666 pipe< 0666 MA0 0Mtv 2>v ufpa peTép~],"

'"

"xp6ooxov" is conspicuously absent. Surely this must saike us as odd and put the

reading immediately into question. Nor does Plato appear to use any words or images that

are clearly interpretable as similes for the mask One might expect Plato to attempt to use ~ @ ~ w t o vand &oc (which after aii, have similar meanings) in conjunction somehow.

so as to make the point more clearly that the Forms are "masks." Had he written, "the face (xp6oo~ov)of Beauty," few knowledgeable readers would doubt that what he meant was "the Form of Beauty," and Plato would thereby score a triple-entendre: ''face, Le., mask,Le., Form -of Beauty." But Plato does no such ihing. It is also questionable, as in Brentlinger's account, whether we cm justifiably attribute this modem conception of 'Dionysos-as-becoming" to Plato. Anderson's argument requires that this k Plato's primary understanding of the god. For in the

absence of any clear refmnce to masks, Anderson must assume that the well-attested presence of Dionysos itselfconstitutes a sufficient reference to masks; in other words, the other dionysiac aspects of the dialogue together are sufficient to make it clear in the mind

of his readers that Plato intends to connote 'the masks of Dionysos." But as we have

seen, Dionysos meant a great many diffemt things to Plato's nadm,many of which had nothing to do with masks and whîch themselves (e.g.,

and mysteries) connote

a great many oiher things that receive no mention in Anderson's commentary, or that Likewise, we may doubt the stark opposition between Dionysos and even contradict tl*

Apollo which Anderson has pushed even farther than Brentlinger, to the point that Plato

simply cannot abide the apollinian. Brentlinger stresses that the

"

and the

In partïcular. the Orphic eschatology hinted at by the reference to mysteries, which sugges<ssome sort of unity with the go&, seems to fly in the fue of Anderson's mterpretation of Diotima's doctrine of immortaiity. For the Orpbics, the wouid indeed appear to be a kernel of '?rue*'personal identity hidden wiihin us.

&a&,

Mitten about the same the, give contrasting poriraits of Socrates: the former

focuses on Iife and portrays him as dionysiac. the latter focuses on death and portrays him

as apollinian. In the

Socrates is shown "practising" for death, and describes life as

valuable primarily as a means to die well. Since Anderson is famiiiar with Brentlinger's work, we might expect some explanation here of how Plato can be understood as so totally dionysiac and anti-apollinian, but Anderson is perfectly silent on this cornparison with the W.Yet if Apollo enters the

Qthago~anisrn,and Dionysos enters the

(at least partly) by means of (at least partly) by means of

bacchic mysteries; and the bacchic mysteries are as closely related to Pythagoreanism as present-day scholars have suggested, then it would appear that there may be an entirely diff't relationship between these two dialogues, a relationship that rnakes their

portrayals of Socrates far more compatible than either Brentlinger or Anderson wodd allow.

Anderson recognizes the contest of wisdom set up at 175e by Agathon's invocation of the god and so he takes AJlcibiades to be rendering Dionysos' judgement when he places the crown on Socrates' head. In fact, the only use Anderson makes of Dionysos' connection to wine is in relation to this action. When he invoked the god, says Anderson, Agathon did not actually intend that the god should come down to earth and rentier judgement (as in a sense he does through Alkibiades); rather, Agathon was

refetrhg to the wine-drinking to come after dînnerJhe implication is that wine-&inking (Le., Dionysos) will somehow dimiminate between the wise and the unwise. When Aikibiades awards his crown, that is one favourable decision for Socrates h m Dionysos; the other cornes at the end of the party when only Socrates remains sober, despite the

heavy dnnking. Sacrates' wisdom is show by his resistance to wine.Andenon therefore

a p s with Bacon, Anton and othen that ALkibiades' crowning and description of Socrates represent the authoritative verdict of the god that Socrates is more dionysiac and

wiser than Agathon. However, we hear nothing fiom Anderson of a contest between

ciramatic poetry and philosophy, nor any mention at al1 of the end-riddle; aside fiom noting that the mask of Dionysos is suggested to the reader by the mention of the theatre,

Anderson sees no relationship worth mentioning between Dionysos and the dramatists in the .

Likewise, there is aimost no mention of Dionysos' role in mysteries and

the possible implications this might have for understanding Socrates' and AUnbiades'

speeches. Finally, the fact that the

is itself a dionysiac institution contribuîes

nothing to Anderson's interpretation, except to stress that Alkibiades uiumphs as Dionysos over the apolünian doctor, Eryximachos, who tried to banish the dionysiac

drink that Aikibiades reasserts. AU things considered, this lengthy commentary that so heavily emphasizes the dionysiac in the

has surpnsingly little to Say about

most of its dionysiac aspects. Anderson writes, on the fmt page of his fllst chapter, that: Dionysos was god of wine, of madness, of prophesy as weil as of drama, and Plato plays on ail these themes on a number of different levels. But Dionysos seems also to have k e n much more than these. (7)

I lhink we cm agree with these statements wholeheartedly, yet maintain that Anderson

ha not substantiated this c l a h in the course of his commentary. He pursues the "much more" that he refers to in the second sentence (namely masks, and Dionysos' affiliation with Eros) at the expense of, and almost to the exclusion of, the four domains he names in

the first.

-

C Conclusion If one thing follows from this survey of the literature, it is that the role of

Dionysos and the dionysiac in Plato's

has been underestirnated by ail of these

authors, even by those who have made this the central theme of their interpretations of the dialogue. AU of them give insighdul presentations of the dionysiac material to be found in the text, but restrict themselves to partial expositions of the subject Each of them has something to contribute to our understanding of the text; none of them would appear to be completely wrong, despite the amount of disagreement there exists between their interpretations. In the chapters that follow, we shall systematically work through this

material with refennce, where necessary, to the arguments of these previous commentaton, slowly constructing a more complete account of the network of dionysiac symbols that Plato has employed h m . We shall begin (CU)with the most strücing and unexpected part of this network: the institution of bacchic mysteries that, on the surface, strikes so many readers as so obviously un-platonic -and that is paradoxicdy to be

y

1

found in the apparently most platonic part of the dialop: Diotima's doctrine of Eros. Out of this wilI emerge the dialogue's chief contrat (Ch3), between phüosophy as the

esoteric voice of the mysterîes and drama as the exoteric voice of chic religion. Frorn this we will move on to the aristocratic/&mocratic dichotomy connoted by the

w,

and the political significance of Aikibiades (Ch4). HaWig laid out all of the contextualking dionysiac symbolism, we will then tum to the speeches on Eros

themselves as they emerge from this cornplex conSocrates'

Finally, ( ( 3 5 ) we wiil tum to

own speech in order to explicate the resolution of the cornplex problems Plato

has set up: political, religious, and discursive -including the relationship between

dramatic poetry, platonic dialogue, and tme socratic philosophy, or dialectic.

- Chapter Two Philosophy as Mystery

W e have already mentioned the traditional view of Plato as anti-dionysiac and speculated as to its causes, though it is impossible to Say for sure why so Little attention was paid in the past to the very sipnificant role that Plato now appears to have given

Dionysos in the

-.'

The result of this traditional view has k e n a tendency to

assimilate the god to the negative, to what Plato is trying to overcome. Madness,

dninkenness, hationaiity, and the loss of self-control, moderation and mesure -these

seem antithetical to the canon of Greek virtues that we hear so much about in flato's work, and they are some of what Dionysos has been taken to represent in this dialogue; if these things concem Plato at all, then, surely it is as the symptoms of a society and a world out of touch with the reality of truth, beauty and justice. Such an approach either ignores the dionysiac aspects of the

altogether or takes them for granted as

the negative foi1 to Plato's designs, and then n a d y attends more to the "positive," non-

dionysiac content of the text. This is only nanual, given the basic hermeneutical problem of the platonic dialogues: some assumptions about what matters to Plato and what sort of

person he is seem to be indispensable for "opening"the text -as he clearly invites us to do; yet he seems also to have done his utmost to prevent us fiom pinning d o m what the

As evidencedby the work of the recent authon we have surveyed

113

correct assumptions are, if mye2And after all, Dionysos is the god of wine, who overcomes otherwise sensible and morally responsible men with dninkenness; given the texts we have there seems to be no point in assuming that what Plato really wants is to

advocate a life of "sex and drugs and rock-n'-roll." We are told repeatedly in the that Socrates does not get dnmk -mer. Is it not then clear that Plato is, at least in spirit, anti-dionysiac? That this view is t w simple should be immediately suggested by the

m.

where Socrates praises dl varieties of divine madness, including the bacchic, and disparages those who cling fastidiously to sobriety and sense; but even with regard to that dialogue, it seems, the anti-dionysiac prejudice stands firm. Consider the following quotation fiom Josef Pieper, discussing the concept of

in the -:

But what is meant by numia?The word is often translatedfrenzy or madness. But "madness" seems to me an inahquate and misleading definition. In the first place, the word connotes unsoundness and irrationality. In the second

place, it gives the impression that Socrates is talking about something h m the realm of primitive magic. It suggests ties with the orgiastic Dionysian cults. This in effect makes bis ideas seem alien and of no serious concem to us. The tcrmfrenzy, on the other hancl, suggests something poetic, romantic, non-essential, somethingthat may even k arbiaarily induced by a dmg; once again, ideas of diis sort need not realiy concem us. We do not have to take them bously. (49) Pieper goes on to attempt a defïnition of Plato's &in tems that would avoid al1 such vulgar associations; he speaks instead of "transport," of "a king-beside-oneself:' of "a sumnder of autarchic independence and self-control; a state in which we are not active, : but passive" (459, and of the iiteral sense of -

not enthusiasm, but b b k n g

Aithough Gerharti Kdiger agms with the assumption of Plato's antidionynanism,he deserves the credit for questionhg the ovet-hasty dismissalof the dionysiac that is stiu common today m Piato schotarship, by arguing that Pliüo gave Dionysos a auciai. ifironic, role in expressing his positive message. mger put Plato's use of the dionysiac mto question, and thk a p to have opened the way for others to find in Plat0 a Iess h o d e aithde.

filied with the god" (50). But in fact these secondary terms Pieper uses to define &

are aU just as suggestive as is "madness" itself of the "orgiastic Dionysian cults" that he calls &levant to understanding Plato. b'Being-beside-oneself' is just the literd

translation of-;

the surrender of self-control to the god, -&;

and the "state

in which we are not active, but passive," pathps. Ali of these terms

-a m, ,

,

pathPS and enthousiasmas (together with

m) -are used by the Greeks

almost interchangeably to describe the ''madness" and "frenzy" of the

in the

mysteries.' Pieper's view of Dionysos as confined to the realm of "primitive magic" thus greatly exaggerates the difference between the dionysiac and the thought of Plato, whom he sees by contrast as concemed with 'Vie ultimate, all-embracing, divine Ground of the

univene'' (67). If dionysiac cult represents a genuinely religious point of view then it too may be concemed with the "ultimate Ground of the universe," in its own way; Pieper's

assumption that it does not has made it impossible for him to see it as a variety, or even as

a metaphor, of Plato's divine madness. For Pieper, Dionysos remains "alien and of no senous concem," both to Plato and to us. We may agree that "madness" is a poor translation of Plato's &, expenence of bacchic

but it might also be an equdly poor translation for the

m.

Nor does the use of "dnigs" as stimulants adequately caphue the sense of b'fknzy" in rnystery cults as Pieper suggests. The mind-altering effect of the dmgs -or likewise,

of the frenetic music and dance -is not itself ikntical with the religious experience, nor is it suff?cient to generate the acnial ''fkenzy." Wine merely gets the reveler started; the

rest is up to the gcxk

"To be taken by the god'Fs an event that will happen in an unforeseeable way, and probably oniy to a few spetial individuds...Bven the most common dnig often identifkd with Dionysus, wine, is not suffiCient to induce me

bokcheia: anyone can get dnink, but not al1 are bakchoi. (Burkert, m. i 12) In fact, Diotima's description of how philosophical conversations prepare one for an

anticipated but unpredictable and passive encounter with divinity sounds not entirely

unlike the preparation of celebrants by wine to experience a rapturous union with Dionysos -in which case we might even say that Iogical arguments are the drug of choice for Diotima's mysteries.

That is a metaphor we shail have to r e m to below at more length (Ch. 3). For now, let us turn to a general consideration of the relationship between philosophy and mystery cults before we look at the evidence of the the

itself. For clearly, despite

and despite Diotima's words, there seerns on the surface to be very little in

common between acnial bacchic throughout the Greek world

m,with theK raving initiates that were spread

-and someone like Socrates. Socrates exhibits nothing that

would typically count as "rnadness," no frenzy, no ecstatic dancing or singing, no sexual misconduct or drunkenness, in the pages of Plato's dialogues. It is safest to begin, then,

by admitting the ambivalence of Plato's presentation of Socrates' relationship to the religious experience of the mystery cults. At fint glance, the Svmwsium does not make it at ali obvious that Plat0 or Socrates is opposed in principle to "orgiastic Dionysian cult," but neither is it obvious what philosophy might have in common with it.

-

A Phiiosophy and Mysteries Prior to Plato

That Plato might see an affinity between philosophy and mystery cuit should perhaps not surprise us when we consider the biographies and teachings of some of the earlier Greek philosophers. Understandabiy, recent generations of philosophen tracing the lineage of their discipline back to its august ohginatm have been somewhat embamissed to find Pythagoras with his secretive number-worship and aversion to beans,

Parmenides receiving the Truth in person h m the Goddess on high, and Empedocles leaping into a volcano to prove his own divinity. Can these be the same men who supposedly first introduced humanity to some of its most fundamental intellecnial

advances

-pure mathematics, logical necessity and the doctrine of the four physical

elements? The tenàency has been to see these early figures as bold innovators moved by the new spirit of philosophy, stepping out ont0 a path that leads eveniually to the hard-

nosed science of Aristotle and beyond, yet unable to fnethemselves completely from the

mire of myth and superstition that they were bom in? However, it is important to note

* As the reader is no doubt aware, the k t of these thBepmpposes the second. The iiterature on the matter has demonstrated that the crucial step in the emergence of pure mathematics was the pmof of the existence of irrational numbers. which was made possible only by the advent of eleatic diaiectic and can be dated to the begmaing of the fourth century BCE Plato's Methne. This is one of many reasons why pure mathematics cannat be attn'buted ta Pythagoras hinueif, who emerges mstead h m the earliest tradition as neither a philosopher nor a mathematician, but as a "shamanistic"cult-leader,number-magicianand myth-maker (Burkert, afterHetacliitus fr.40, concludes he is essentially an "orphicHesiod", 9 208-217. esp. 209f). That laiet Pythagoreans beame philosophen and mathematicians is, of course, not in dispute. * E.g., Guthrie, after descnig the similanty between the orphic and AnaXimander's cosmogony: m a texcites our admiration is nevertheless the truiy remarkable extent to which, in a myth-ridden WorId, these early tûinkers succteded m casting off mythicai expression and 224). W i d e the Milesians can be d t c d with speaLiog in the language of science" desiring such a traasformationin language. it is not clear that the western Greek philosophas were as eager to put myth behind them.

-

that the pecuüar varicty of myth and superstition that many of these figures were involved

with was itseîf not mof-the-mil1 for the Greece of their &y; it too, like philosophy, was a fairly new anival on the sceneO6 And we need look no farther than the pythagonan cults

of the fifth century BCE to see the two brought into complete and explicit conjunction. Then is ai least the possibility that early Greek philosophy was not as alien to this variety of "myth and superstition" as modem temperaments would like to have it. They have a great deal more in common than coincidence in time. Fint, both cm be seen as facets of the emergence of individualism in Greek society, as they orient

themselves explicitly to the concems and the projects of the individual? This made mystery cults into the object of some state and public mistrust (Burkert,

11), not

unlike philosophy.' More importanly, both gave a central role to Adyot -not just

"speeches" or "sayings" but howledge; words that carried within them a higher and uncommon wisdom, the possession and understanding of which could bring a better

In fact, t h m are quite a few testirnonies about the preparatory "leamhg" and b'tcan~mission" (paradosis)that took place in mystenes,as well as about the "complete" or exact '?oiowledge"that was to be acquind Speech, logos, had an important role to play, and the injunction "not to tell" the uninitiated was taken so seriously because verbalization was central to the pmceedings. Mystenes were pnsumed to possess a "sacred tale," hieros logos, and this could well have been conta'ned in a book. Evidently, mystai were to l e m

The earliest evidence for theexistence of mystery cul& thernselves (Eleusis is fksS foîiowed soon a f k by bacchic mystenes), as weil as for the orphic mythology that informs them. 2; "Orphism" 2f), as does philosophy. The dates to the sixth cenniry BCE (Burkert, hotûed of orp,bicand bacchic activity in the nffh cenairy BCE was southem Italy and Sicily, as it was of philosophy. For pbilosophy this individuahtic orientation was epistemological. for the mysteries, eschatological;by the time we get to Plato's work,of coune, these two concem have merged, as couid not be more cleariy expressedthan by the For this even Aristophanes' ÇLppdgsufnces, but Plato leaves no doubt about pMosophy's ili repute with the p o p k and the state by his many statements thughout the

m.

'

dialogues, e.g.,

482-486,

473e474a,

3 16c-3 1%.

mon about gods and their pnviously unknown details, aspects,or identities. Chrysippus the Stoic considered b'tmnsmission"of a "logos about gods," that is, "theo1ogy~'to be the essence of tefetui.Echoes of such a logos are alnady present in Empedocles and Parmenides, as in the mystagogic speech of Diotima in Plato's Sympusium. (Burkert, 70) There is, of course, a fundamental clifference between the and heroes) of the mysteries, and the

. .

(stones about gods

(accounts of nature) of the philosophers;

the former might be secrets divinely rcvealed and unquestionable, the latter were logical

arguments ventured by individual thinkers and openly subjected to criticism? But this distinction is easily bridge4 both conceptually and historicaily, by the innovation of

degory. In allegory, the mythographercan easily tum phi~osopher,'~ and in the nature dlegory of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE the distinction cornes close to breaking down ~ompletely.~ A third cornmonality between philosophy and mystenes was their openness to the

influence of 0rphism.12Pythagoreanism is a special case here, as it was a variety of Parmenides famously combines these apparently opposite aspects, but this is appropriate to hi6 subjeci: the catainty of divine revelation is made compatible with philosophical criticism precisely via the new concept of logicd necessity (just as in Descartes' two rnillennia later). 'O E.g., 'lt was tempting 'to take a logos from philosophy as mystagogue' in order to 378a; note how penetrate to the core of mysteries" (Burkert, &&n& 72, quoting Plutarch. Plutach is suggesting the exact opposite of what Socrates does m the SvmwJium, i.e., taking a fiom Diohm's mysteries as mystagogue in order to penetrate to the core of philosophy). Just such a method also appars to explain how genuine philosophy emerged witbin Pythagorranism:cult memben trying to make sense ailegoridy of the unquestionably mie.but b i tdictates of kirlong-deceasedmaster (Much of this fascinatingtale is brought to üght by Burwho anatomks the mountah of evidence with exemplary erudition in esp. 15-217). l1 Eg., Burkert, A 8lf. This sort of chùig cm account for the dificulty of pinniag down Empedocles: was he really a philosopher, or ~ o m cland of a religious cult-figure? The answer, it seems. is that he was bath: appatently working from identifiable books of orphic myth (Kingsley 141-148). he nonetheles aimed to give a logicd account of nature in those vezy tems (Guthrie 23lf; Kingsley's book as a whole deals with this, but esp. 1-78). That Diotirm's own speech about Ems is an example of a myth/natttre allegory is obvious. l2 We shail enduvour to avoid the mily vast amount of scholarly debate concerning the nature and history of ûrphîsm, but a few items aie absolutely pertinent here to set the scene (The following summary foflows Burkert, "OrpOsm" lff, and Kingsley 117f & 259t). In the nineteenth

m.

mystery cuit whose members appear to have been the source of much of the doctrine that was called orphic, and who also gave rise to one "school" of philosophy. But the so-

called orphic books and doctrines now known to be in circulatim as early as the middle

of the sixth century BCE also supplied the rapidly increasing demand for "theologia" occasioned by the rise in popularity of the mystery cults more generally, so that some

ideas that clearly had a unique origin in orphism later became common currency. Two such ideas relevant to our study are the doctrine of the divine irnmortal soul, separable

h m the body, and the myth of "Chthonian Dionysos," -tricked, murdered, dismembered, cooked and eaten by the Titans, who were themselves then punished by Zeus' lightning bolt, reducing them to ashes, and out of whose ashes (still containhg the digested god, Dionysos, dispersed within them), mankind was fashioned These two

orphic doctrines are of course just reflections of a single idea, one logical in form, the other mythicai. As Burkert has documented, mysteries are to be un&rstood as an experimental century the=

WPS a great deal of literaîure pubüshed about Orphism, much of it speculative because of the dearth of evidence. Then in 1932Wiamowitz initiated a skeptical attack on the scholarship that v W y swept the field, and others foiiowed suit, with the result that thmugh much of the twentieth century the existence both of bDrphim"per se and of a pre-platonic orphic literature have been dismissed as the imaginative constructs of outdated and unscientinc scho1arship. However, a numba of recent archaeologicaldiscoverîes have effectively ~fiitedthe skepticai position and have confhed and reestabüshed nineteenth-century ideas on a 'bew foundation,*'and even led weii beyond them. The discoveries are thne: 1) an i n s c r i i gold hinerary plate of a type weîi-known to mhaeo10gists aad dated to 400 BCE. found at Hipponium in southern Italy m 1969,wbich shows conclusively that the whole srries of plates repnsents initiation inm bacchic mystexies, though they had previously been thought obviously pythagonan; 2) a papyrus found at Demeni in Macedonia m 1962, also dated to 400 BCE, wbich contains a philosophical cornmentary on a much earlier theogony of ûrpheus; 3) an Aptilian vase painting also of a familiar type,pubüshed in 1976, showing a person achieving heroic (i.e.. divine) status upon his death by means of a book of Orpheus. The importance of these discoveries cannot be overestimated, as they set the stage for the vimiPI unification of Pythagorranism,Orphimi and bacchic mystcnes at tùe end of the nfth cenany BCE,which now bas largely been accomplished in the literature (Kingsley 256264: Burkert, "Orphie" 6f). 1say ''virtual" because some distinctions, of course, still remain, but we shall corne back to these matters more directly where necessary.

variation on votive practice within Greek religion (Annent 12-29). Nonnally, as in

Homer, a Greek (as votary) would promise some particular deed or gift on behalf of the god in exchange for an equaiiy particular favour. If the favour was granted (e.g., a

successfid sea-voyage, or recovery h m an illness) then the votary was obliged to fulnl the promise (e.g., a rich sacrifice, or the building of a temple). Equally, favours might be "banked," as it were, by votive gifts piled high in advance in case of an ernergency. With

the innovation of mysteries, the votary instead pledged his or her very person as a votive

gift to the god in exchange for apennmient state of blessedness, i.e.,better luck in dl facets of one's entinz life, not just in particular dangers. One especiaiiy threatening facet of Me,of course, is death, and so the mystenes tended to provide "good hop" in that

regard as well. "The fear of death is a fact of life," Bwkert says, and so "mysteries were 23). In their nearmeeting practical needs even in their promises for an afterlife" (M

universal concern with life after death, the ancient mystery cults (including bacchic mysteries) were in fact stili serving the basic and traditional orientation of Greek religion:

an improvement of this life.I3 The influx of Orphism into the Greek world, probably from the north-east, some tiw during the sixth century B a , appears to have significantly altered this in many cases. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the earliest evidence for which points to the figure of Pythagoras and to some forms of bacchic my~terîes,'~ radicalized the

cornmitment to a blessed afterlife that was alnady becoming part of mystery-cult mythology," and in some cases added a moral dimension that was cleady not part of -.

--

* Cf. Worth 155 for the identical conclusion with regard to the Korybantic rites in partîdar. l4

Burkat.

87.

"However, that even bacchic mysteries did not simply meld with Orphism en masse is

mystery cul& per se. In thîs regard, we find the rnyth of Chthonian Dionysos playing a large role in bacchic mysteries, and showing up in other traditions as well:

This myth [of Chthonian Dionysos] is expiicitly comected with the mysteries by several authors,16 and it seems that Herodotus considered it a secret although he has several allusions to it. Later texts treat it as just part of normal mythology. (Burkert, Anamt 73) However, it is significant that this influence does not appear to have been lasting. Because mystery cults per se were not a new religion. did not involve a significant transformation of personal identity, and rarely instituted any form of genuine religious community, they remained mon committeà, in the long run. to the individual personal experience of votive initiation with its prirnary subjective result, "feeling better now,""

than to any sort of theology, orphic or ~therwise.'~ In fact, the only place where orphic doctrines did appear to peaist within the idiom of mystenes was in the postclassicai mystery-cults of philosqhy where written doctrine and allegoncal interpretation remained centrally importanfL9i.e., varieties of neo-platonism and later pythagoreanism. Plato's philosophy, and Plato's myths in particular, are unquestionably the crucial factors in perpetuating mysteries of these sorts: shown by Euripides' -, which is one of the cbief sources for dionysiac mythology and Jpeaks ofmysterîes, but shows Littie or no trace of orphic influence. l6 Che of the authon Biulrat refers to here is Plato: "In the Cratylus, plat01 amibutes specifîcaiiy to 'ûrpheus and his followers' the doctrine that man's soui is imprisoned in the body on account of certain Crimes; and this evidently is identical with the 'secret myth' hinted at in the Phuedo, whae Plato uses the word @pou& Xenocrates, however, Plato's disciple and successor, commented on this passage by nferring to 'Titans and Dionysos"' ("ûrphism" 5.51128;Plato &a& 62b, Xenocrates Fr. 100 Heinze). Ci.aiso 701c. l7 Burkert, BllEjmt 19. l8 E.g., in regard to some staunchly traditional passages in Pindar, Guthrie writes: "'the quotarions bring out yet agah how fat beyond the grasp of the ordinary Greek the religious views of the Orphies were. T h y may seme to di@ any lingering feeling of surprise that these views never acqaind my generai hold on the popilp mhd until after the break-up of the classical age" (OrPheus 237). Pmdar's orphic passages do not refiect his own beliefs, Guthrie argues (236). So much so that "in inter pfatonism one could fmd just logos without any comsponding ritual" (Burkert, 73).

"

It was a transient symbiosis of mysteries and spiritual doctrine that developed in this way, in which neither patt was essentially dependent on the other. The idea of trans&gration lived on mainly on the authority of Plato, as an incentive to speculation for Platonists, Gnostics, and Christian~.~

But there were pre-platonic precedents for this association of philosophy and orphism as well. Aside h m the obvious case of the Pythagoreans there was also Empedocles, himself virtually an '~orpheotelestes"(mystagogue of orphic mysteries) who claimed a howledge that granted him magical power over nature (Guthrie, Omheus 23 1). Parmenides too has language peppend with orphic expressions, and his work is written in typical "mantic" form as a personal divine revelation, though no one doubts the onginality of his insight. Nor is it only the western G m k philosophers who wen open to this influence. Pythagoras was originally from Samos and there is little doubt that the

religious impulse that moved him emanated from the ma of the northem and eastem Aegean. Though Herakleitos provides a clear counter-point, with his ridicule of

Pythagoras, of mysterycults and even of the worship of Dionysos per se, there are remarkable similarities to orphism in the Milesian school as early as Anaximander, whose

own cosmogony exactly parallels the orphic one (Guthrie,

223)." With rrgard to

the latter, Guthrie writes:

"

Ibid. 88. Burkert goes on to add that for later periods, '%y far the most infiuential w
about mystaies, Plato's dialogues effatively produced for some. an outright identification of philosophy and mysterydt for centuries aftenuacds. This naairally complicaies the task of comparing the two, since later sources might mdicatePlato's influence more than any cornmon cause;e-g.. Kingsley's reconstruction of the influence of a single orphic text that stands behind Empedocles, Plato and Plutarch (135-148). It h perhaps worth noting that in the orphic cosmogony Guthne compares to An;uciman&r, Ems is a mediator lyhg between Heaven and Earth. B u p o t e s other orphic allasions in Diotima's speech (xlii.

*'

These examples are, 1think, suffiCient to show what an indelible impression was made, even on the most original and open-minded thinkers, by the mythical cosmogonies which were constnicted in the name of Orpheus probably at the beginning of the sixth,century. These cosmogonies doubtless represented the first conscious attack on the pmblem of the One and the Many. This problem obsessed every Greek philosopher, and the earliest mythical solution of it died harder than the Greeks themselves realized. (Omheus 224)

From both east and West, then, early philosophers and rnystery-cults both received an impress h m orphism that was strengthened by Plato's dialogues into a bond between

them in postclassical times. Finally, we might just note the emphasis on the unorthodox life. or b, that marked out philosophers as different h m the average person, as was the case with some cults and above all with the varied class of mantics themselves. h a d y with Thales there

is the story of the olive-press, which is meant to show that the weirdness of his lifestyle

-his neglect of money-making and political affairs -was not an incapacity, but a choice. And it is not without reason that Morgan raises the possibility that Socrates has

k e n portrayed by Plato as a bacchic charismatic himself. His choice of poverty. his shoelessness, his odd behaviour, his preoccupation with right and wrong, ail fit the mold

of the&l

of the holy man offifth-century Greece. All of these features that were shared

to some extent by philosophy and mystery cults, taken together -the UT the openness to orphism, the extraordinary focus on knowledge and

m,and the orientation towards

the person as an individual d e r than as a citizen - make quite an argument for the similarity and the interaction of these two phenornena that seem so alien to each other at f b t glance. Our modem preoccupation with rationaiity and science has perhaps led us to

downplay the fm that there was more to early Greek philosophy than just rationality and

science. But for Plato, of course, these parailels would have been much more vivih Two particular historical cases of the interpenetration of philosophy and mysteries prior to Plato can pmvide some orientation towards Plato's use of mystenes in the

.-

The f h t of these is the relationship between Pythagoreanisrn and the

dionysiac. Tt is well known that Pythagoras and his cuits had close ties to the god Apollo,

with Pythagoras apparently even claiming to be ''Hyperborean Apollo" himself. The emphasis on a rnoralistic psychic purification in this pythagorean cult of Apollo, together with its concentration in arjstocratic &les in cities in southern Italy, its obvious

inclination towards rational philosophy and science, and the apparent compatibility of all of this with the delphic-apollinian dictates of moderation and self-knowledge has been takm to paint a portrait of a cuit and a lifestyle that is eniirely different from the ecstatic,

"irrational" mystdes of Dionysos with their dninkenness and wild music, which tended to be administered by itinerant beggars and "craftsmen" of dubious morakZ In fact, it would be difficult to imagine how these two types of mystery cult, of Apollo and Dionysos, could k more opposed than they have been conceived as king in much of twentieth-century scholarship.

The discovery of the gold plate at Hipponium and the reinstatement of the existence of an orphic literature has shattered thîs picture. Bacchic mysteries are no longer conceived as a phenornenon codîned to the lower classes; that the plates are gold is enough to disprove that Nor are they thought of as k i n g distinct.in tenor fiom much of

the contemporary "apoIlinian" cult of magoras. Kingsley, for instance, can now Wnte

with iîttle fear of contradiction: ~urkert,''Itinerant Diviners and Magicians" 119. A basic source hae is Plato, &@&

364b-36%

weli appreciated, the gold plates are not to be distinguished from Pythagorean ideas and ide01ogy; on the contrary, the evidence suggests that they represent a vital aspect of the nligious landscape in the Gnek West which early Pythagoreans rapidly assimilated and inherited. But that appears to present us with a major problem: any direct point of contact between Pythagoman ideas and Bacchic mysteries would seem incompatible with the famikir concept of Pythagoreanism as a punly Apollonian; upwardly mobile rnovernent. An obvious solution to the problem is to find a bridge between the Bacchic element and the Pythagorean which Links them while at the same time keeping them apart, and the perfect candidate for such a bridging factor is close to hand: Orphic literature. (2609. As

The simple fact that Pythagonans were writing orphic texts while bacchic mysteries were employing them ties these two apparently quite different cults together. Kingsley goes even farther, however. On the basis of a significant number of "tell-tale pieces of

evidence pointing to a direct link between Pythagonans and Bacchic mysteries," he concludes that a "bridge" is not really even needed: this idea of incompatibility is one that should never have been given too much credence. Apollo may have been important for Pythagoreans, but at a pmly theoretical and general level we need to bear in mind that the ApoUonian and Dionysiac elements of Oreek life were intirnatelyintertwined (262)

Burkert concurs. "What is most important," he Mtes, "there are no clearcut borders between 'Orphism' and any comparable phenomeba of the age, notably Bacchic initiations in general, Eleusinian mysteries, and Pythagoreanism" ("Orphism" 6). He suggests that the relationship between these phenornena might best be displayed by means

of a series of overlapping circles, as in Figure 1 (after b6ûqhism"7; Ci-

.

*

300).

What this means for us is that any indication of bacchic mystenes in Plato's svrnwsium imports ta that text a much wider range of possible theological, cult and mythical

associations than has prcviously been recogaized- in fact, no less than the entire range

of the orphic-bacchic-pythagorean-eleusinian religious complexp including nature-allegory and pythagorean philosophy. The second case of pre-platonic

philosophy overlapping with mysteries that may

be pertinent for approaching the svrnwsium is Empedocles' legendary death-leap into the (Le., the mater) of Mt. Etna. *-

Figure 2

was, of

to combine the wine with

course, the name of the great mixing-bowl used at

water before it could be dnink; it was also, by analogy, the name applied to hollows in the earth, and to the mouths of volcanoes in particular

-as it still is today in Enghsh. In

ancient ûreek and Roman literature such places were conceived as "points of descent and entry into the underworld" and therefore became ''places of power" (Kingsley 134). But thete was also a famous orphic book, now lost, named

m,which guarantees that the

was an important orphic symbol. Whether or not the story about Empedocles' leap

has any tmth to it, it is important to remember that it is told in the context of his

achievement of divine status, or his "heroization" -the belief in which was an orphic tenet. Death by fie was a standard mythical component of heroization for the Greeks, especially by the "purest" form of fin,lightning; many of the bacchiciorphic gold plates found in graves testiQ that the initiate died by lightning (i.e., achieved his or her anticipated divine stanis). The legend of Empedocles' death, then, particularly in its This alternativerelîgiots movement peaked at Athens during the Pelopo~esianWar, pabaps because of the plague of430 BCE, but &O no doubt becaase Athens was cut off from Delphî during the war (Dodds 193fn. ff

imitation of Herakles," would appear to fit a pattern of orphic mythology conceming the hemcization of initiates upon their deaths (Kingsley 257). As is weii known, Empedocles' philosophy has a prominent place in the through the speech of the doctor, Eryxhachos (Rosen 94f,109ff). So too does the w i n e - m , though we need to be reminded of that by Alkibiades upon bis

entrante. And lest we think that the Imiter of fiery Etna which occasioned Empedocles'

leap and subsequent heroization be entirely coincidental and unrelated to the wine-kr&x of the

m,we need only look to another

the cosmic

that occurs in Plato's own writing:

of the Tirnaeus (41d4) within which are mixed the various types of

king at the creation of the world. As several commentators have notecl, we have here no

less than a platonic version of the myth of Chthonian Dionysos: And he made her [the world-soul] out of the following elements and on this wise. From the king which is indivisible and unchangeable, and from that kind of being which is distributed amongst bodies, he compounded a third and intermediate kind of being. He did likewise with the sarne and the different, blending together the indivisible kind of each with that which is portioned out in bodies. Then taking the three new elements, he mingled them ali into one fom, cornpressing by force the reluctant and unsociable nature of the diffmnt into the same. When he had mingled them with the intermediate kind of king and out of three made one, he again divided this whole into as many portions as was fitting, each portion king a compound of the same, the different, and being. (35a-b)=

The myth h m the bacchic mysteries has Dionysos "mingiecl"by digestion with the ashes of the Titans, out of which conglomerate is fashioned a dualistic humankind: each person compelled to share in an immortai good part (the god) and a corruptible bad part (the ~mpedocles,Wre Herakles, died byfne on o >nountuin-top and became a god; in the same story, just prior to his death, Empedodes diverteà a river (at Sehus) to cleanse a poilution -one of Herakles' famous labours. Kingsley notes t h tûis is ody to be expec*. "Pythagoreans are presented as pradsing the 'imitation of &racles' h m the very kginnings of PythagoRanism m the West right tlnough to the Christian era" (276). zs Engiish quotations h m the Tirnagis are tcanslateâ by Jowett (Hamilton & Cairns).

Titans), alien to each other. In the sympotic

m,Dionysos (as wine) also is "mingled"

with base stuff (water), h m which conglomerate are portioned out the drinks for the participants (who by chinking, and digesting, have "god" within them, too). In the

m,Plato hasjoined these two dionysiac symbols together (i.e., Chthonian Dionysos and the wine-kray;r). It is tempting to speculate that in doing so he follows the orphic

book m.but even if he is improvising, the significance for our study is not lessened, for as Burkert says: "No doubt the krater with wine was at the center of most Bacchic log)." As for Empedocles' Ieap,

orgia, and roast meat was not absent either"

we can now see in it a curious inversion, or reversal, of this orphic process of creation:

out of the

we are fashioned, a divine sou1 trapped in a corrupt body, and into the

again we die -set free of the body at last? Plato, then, would appear to be perfectly well aware of the content and the significance of bacchic mystenes and could not but have associated them with certain of the most prominent philosophers and

of his own and of Socrates' generation.

I do not mean to suggest by any of this that Plato is himself an "Orphie," that the

is an oiphic text, or even that we must understand Plato to be including

orphic doctrine within the various speeches of the .-

Not at aii. 1mean only to

establish that for Plato it would have ken perfectly naaual to see philosophy in the context of bacchic mysteries. Socrates' initial "pythagorean" discussions about kath with '6 Some of Plato's interpreters (Plutarch, Plotinus and the later Neoplatonists) explicîtiy connect these two images (Burlcert, A86). Kingsley points out that a later Hennetic text (fromhellenistic Egypt), also caiied explicitly makes this v a y equation. Thû book '5s a complex web of ideas, plaidy due to the merging ofdinerent mystery traditions: the kratcr is not just the source of the iiquid the initiate is expected to drinL but a h sornething he has to thiow himself mto so as to become pure and immortal, a 'perfect man' capable ofreascendingto heaven'"(135). This Hermetic tradition was itseif Likely Muenced by the Empedocles legend ( M n 1 1).

m,

Simmias and Kebes at the beginning of the

also throw light on this matter. There

Socrates says "You know, don't you, that everyone except the philosopher regards death

as a great evil?" (68d3)? We hm,of course, that there were a considerable nurnber of

people at that tune who believed death was "not an evil" -the mystery initiates in general and the orphics in particular. Socrates seems almost to be suggesting that the

name 'bphilosophd' apply to them simply in virtue of this doctrine, which he hlmself shares. He then goes on to elucidate his meaning precisely in the terrns of bacchic mystery initiation: ~ are Perhaps these people who dinct the nligious initiations [ t à reAerdltJ not so far h m the mark, and al1 the tirne there has been an allegorical meaning [aivfneaûar] beneath their docttine that he who enters the next world uninitiated and unenlightened Iap6qsoç uai a ~ S A e a t os~h] d lie in the m k , but he who mives there puSied and eniightened [ ~ m c a 8 a p p é v o ~ se icd te~eAeupévoç]shaU dweil among the gods. You know how the initiation practitioners [oi xepi r à reheroiç] ~ Say, "Many bear the emblems [vap0qit0+6po1] but the devotees [pkxoi] are few"? Well, in my opinion these devotees are simply those who have lived the philosophical life in the right way [ o h o i 6'eidiv irmà r q v épfiv 66Cav o d ~EMOLfi o i xe@hooo~q~6sec 6pBôfl. (69~3-d2)"

As we noted above,

was a term that might be applied to the extraordinary state

of excitement in just about any of the mystery initiations. That is not the case here, where are translatexi by Treâennîck (Hamüton& Cairns). a English quotations from the 29 Note how Socrates refers to an altegorical meaning, which he Links to philosophy. Most people who get initiateci are driven by a fear of death and other caiamities to seek out these magicai rites. and go away, perhaps satidied with h a v i .morneci the rituai and hoping that the "ticket"bey purchased thereby wili indeed k howuredby the keepers of the gate leadhg to blessedness a f k their deaths. The phüosophers, however, understand why death is not to be fcarcd; these are the real initiates. Tojus@ Socrates' clah, then, that oniy philosophers do not tbinLof death as an enl, we might rrphnse a statement of Kr(igefs (90) and say that most initiates, due precisely to the techniCity of theirdevotion. ''remah negaiively arrested in the pathos" of the fe~rof &th, while pbilosopbas achieve genuine needom h m fear, through understanding. This d o u not mem that Socrates iiterally intends to ciasw ail pbilosophen as a subciass of bacchic initiates, oniy tbat the philosophical Me k identicai, in effect, to the rites; whatever it is ihat the phiIosophers [oi ne@aAoao@q~6t:e~ 6pûG<] understand about death isjust the me ''meaning"of the mysteties.

a

Socfates' appeai to the proverb is more explicit:

"w were the devotees of Dionysos

alone, and oniy they camied the "narthex siem" during their ceremonies; yet Socrates does not balk in the lest from identimg philosophers with these W h o i . Kingsley explicitly notes the significance that this language has for the connection of philosophy and mystenes in the fifth century BCE. Le., how Plato's usage actually betrays the lack of rigid bounhies between these phenornena: Again, it is in that web of allusions to Orphic sacred poetry which shows -and which, as we have seen, through at various points in Plato's was part of the legacy to Plato h m the Pythagoreans that we find the single verse which perfectly encapsulates the notion of a Bacchic [Le.. dionysiac] esotedcism. (263)

-

At the very least this should put to rest any doubts about the compatibility of philosophy

and Dionysos for Plato; bucchic mystery cult would be a workable metaphor for philosophy if for no other m o n than because in the expenence of his readers so many philosophers would have shared doctrines, Iûestyles or even cult memberships with the bacchics and orphies? Finally, it is perhaps worth pointing out that this aspect of the

dionysiac

-the orphic/eschatologicaI -rexeived almost no attention, aside from

Morgan, in the previous attempts to formulate the role of Dionysos in the .Yet l i s Dionysos, an immortal god buried within each of us beneath our outer shell of

"Despite the "lowef' and viscerai assaiationsof bacchic cult, these forms were not

necessarüy dominant: "in its relation to the mysteries of Dionysus, Orphic literature shows a concem not with the coarser revels and celebrationsbut with a more esoteric aspect of the mystenes, with a h d of mystay within the mysteries focushg on the fate of the sou1 afier death" (Kingsley 261). wbich suggests that these mysteries could be a gooddeai more ioieiiectual than they appeareà h m the outside. Burkerî notes the d i v d t y within baechic rites: 'The forms of Bacchic initiation probably varied a great deal h m groiip to gmup and h m perîod to penod, with the extent of these variations saetchmgh m outdoor picnics to an existentid hirnmg-point m life. 292).This coufhs what we M m sublime symbolism to downright orgies" suggested &et, coma Pieper, that we must not over-hastily dismiss these mysteries per se as unconcemeû with what hec a b 'the irlthak, aII-embracmg, divine Ground of the universen (Pieper 67).

..

corruptible "body," and identical with our tmest self, is almost diametrically opposed to the "life-affinning" conceptions of Dionysos as "nature-daernon," as '4platonic

becoming," and as "dan vital" that are ceneal to the theses of. e.g., Bmtlinger and

Anderson.

-

B PhUmphy and Mysteries in the &~~Q&IR

b.1) Socrates and Diotima

Turning to the

itself, we find that language evoking mystenes occurs

in just two contexts, and only in conjunction with socratic philosophy: Socrates' re-telling of Diotima's teachings about Eros, and Akibiades' speech in praise of Socnites. The former is brief, though explicit," the latter more elaborate and shot through with dionysiac irnagery? One thing that is striking about both cases is how casually these statements are made. Given the dnunatic date of the dialogue, we cannot help but think of what happeaed very soon a b as a resuit of the "affair of the mystenes:" summary death

sentences, confîscation of property, or exile, for a considerable number of people including thtee of those present at Agathon's W. Yet concern over bbprofanation" of mysteries is conspicuously absent in relation to these passages, a fact that Plato seems

" Distinguishing the Iesser h m the greater mysteries,209e5-210a4; corning to the finai revelatiou, 21lb5-c8. Socrates, as Marsyas, m v d s those in need ofinitiati011,21W-6;Socrates' words have the same effect as the Korybants, 21kl-3;bacchic maàness of philosophy, 218b3-4;the uninitiated should cover their ears, 21ûb5-7.

'

even to emphasize for us by Akibiades' facetious injunction to the slaves and anyone else "profane and vulgar" to cover their ears (218b5-7)." Alkibiades would appear to have an excuse on this occasion -after all, he says he is only speaking metaphoncaily (W

eiic6vov, 215a5); but the mysteries of Eros that Socrates reveals appcar to be in earnest:

"There you are, then, Phaedrus, and the rest of you. That's what Diotima said to me, and 1, for one, Rnd it convincing" (212bl-2).1s Socrates not committing the very sort of crime

for which Alkibiades was later prosecuted and sentenced to death?

The answer to this question is not as simple as it might seem, because it is not

"-

entirely clear whether we are to understand the contents of Socrates' speech as achially

constituting the "mystenes" of Eros. Recall the quotation from Burkert (above, 112) concerning the

m.or 4bpnparatorylearning" that appears to have accompanied the

initiations in many cults; here is where we should expect to find a

, e*g*,a 19

tale such as the myth of Chthonian Dionysos, or other contents of the orphic "books."

Much of what Diotima teaches Socrates would appear to fit such a description, especially the account of Eros' parents and birth. Mysteries proper, however, were not doctrines but rites (PCOIIÙ

-events that occurred in a particula.time and place and during which

initiates experienced an extraordinary and psychologicaily compeiling b m h with

Mysteries were initiation ritucrls of a voluntary, personal, and secret character that aimed at a change of mind through experience of the sacred. (Burkert, il. my emphasis) It is notable that Socrates relates no such personal "experience of the sacred" in his fi 'Profme and vdgar" is "fl6PqI6~ re xaۈ y p o ~ ~ oDover ~ . " writu. "the fonner is a rather technid word (sometimes Litrraly 'uninitiated'. hence not entitied to hear the secrets of a mystery cuit)" (170).

speech. The h t mention of mystenes in the

does not even occur until we

have passed through eight Stephanus-pages of Diotima's "teachings." Evidently, these teachings were,spread out, at least over severai days (207a5-6). What she then says is tk

So far, Socrates, 1have dedt with love-mysteries [raûra tà époriuà] into which even you could probably be initiated [K&V 06 pqBeiqq], but whether you could grasp the perfect revelation [sà séliea I Cénoxs~~c&] ~\ to which they lead the pilgrim if he does not stray from the right path, I do not know. However, you shall not fail for any lack of willingness on my part: 1wiU tell you of it, and do you try to follow if you can. (209eS-210a4, my emphasis) The optative mwd of puqeefq~,as indicated by this English translation, makes it cbar that no initiation has yet been performed: Socrates could be initiated thus far, which

implies that he has not yet ken, despite Diotima's having aIready taught him a great &al about Eros. Likewise for the subsequent description of the "right path" to

W.the 'Hnal revelation:" it is the description of a life-long joumey, or at least a journey of many years beginning in one's youth, and culrninating at 1st in a vision of

kauty "itself'(8ewpévq aUt6 76 ~a&, 211d2-3). To be precise, then, the "final mysteries" are not what Diotima conveys to Socrates, but rather the vision that she

&scribes.Y

Yet there is no indication from Socrates that he wer pursued this final

revelation with Diotima, or, in fact, that he received any ""rites"from her whatsoever. Rather, as is clearly stated in the quotation above. she tells him of the mysteries, both the

"

That w m distinct hm,and secondaq to, the mystery-rites themselves is certain. as Plato's own langiiage demonstrates at 8la With regard to this passage*Biukert writes: 'This implies thnt there wen other priests and priestesses who did not care and jwt perfonned their mpnipulations without any 'account' (logos);they would have lemeci what to do fiom tnditioaal practice. fn fact, the magical or even digious eff't is possible *out antecedent conceptuai clarification, even if PIato evidently pnfers those priests and priestesses who are not content with manipulating things but endeavor to fmd a plausible explaaation, an 'account' that can be communicated to others" (710. Diotima exempLifies Plato's preferred kînd of mystagogue -one who explainsh W

preliminary and the final, in order that he may have a better chance of success when he &es pursue

-but, curiously, she doubts whether he is capable of it.

Are we to assume that Diotima's suspicion was correct, so that even at his

advanced age (he is about fifty-four in 416) Socrates' still has no actual expenence of the "mysteries" to relate? Or is Socrates simply not forthcorning?He gives no hint to this gathering, and so it remains unclear whether Socnites ever did follow through on this teaching himself, and achieve the.-

Diotima certainly seems to have

assumed that that was his goal (cf. the emphasis in the quotation above). In response to a lacicluster answer to one of her leading questions, she asks, "How can you expect ever to become an expert [6eeiv6~]on the subject of love, if you haven't any ideas about this?' to which Socrates replies, perhaps with some pique, "1 told you before, Diotima, that this is prexisely why 1have corne to you. 1 know that 1need a teachef' (207~2-6).This shows

that Socrates has intentionally set out to become 6e1v6q on Ems. His conversations with Diotima did not just h a p p by accident, as these at Agathon's party do; rather, he went to her specifically to leam ta erotik? And when Eryximachos h t proposes a prognm of

speeches praising Ems, Socrates' reply is: "Nobody will vote against your proposal Eryximachus...l certaînly shall not, for 1declare that love is the only subject that 1 understand [kria+ao6aei]"(177d6-8).This, too, in the context of his later account of Diotima's teachings, would appear to imply that Socrates has indced followed through to 5 t h nga&to a story h m Herodotus concerning one particular initiation (4.78-80. circa 450 BCE -the same time as Socrates' encouter with Diotima), Burkert observes tint ''Here Bacchic initiations are neither a spontaneous outbunt nor a public festival; admission nsts on persona1 application. thnr is a preparatory period,.a*tradition ofsacred rites, and h a i i y integratkm into the gmup of the initiates"'( C i 291). Socraîes' Ianguage here suggests such a b ~ r s o u aapplication'" i to Diotima, wbile bis speech wouid appear to confine itseif to teachings h m the "preparatory paiodf Dîotima's vision, on the other hand, coostitutes the "sacreà rites" themselves. 135

the final revefation. But on the other hancl, when it cornes to sharing his expertise, Socrates tells of nothing more than what was conveyed in Diotima's 'preparatory"

teachings, which suggests that what he has told them constitutes, for him, a satisfactory account of the nature and value of Esos, with or without the subsequent addition of the mysteries. And nowhere does he daim to have gp&mg

of "beauty itself," which we

might expect of him had he seen the final vision. In fact, the presumption that Socrates has at any point in his life attained complete)'-"(

kiowledge of the

highest things must run up against his denial of any such knowledge in the

m.So

the question remains: did he or did he not perform the "rites" and experience the sacred? Then might seem to be two ways of avoiding this difficulty. First, one could

propose that Diotima's use of mystery-language is itself only metaphoncal, or just a selfimportant way of referring to her own theories about the nature of love, so that readers such as we create our own difficulty by seeing hvo referents (teachings and mysteries)

when really there is only one (the teachings). We can easily reject this interpretation. Socrates establishes Diotima's authority as a reiigious figure right at the start by reference

to her ten-year postponement (apparently by giving advice concerning sacrifices

[8uaapf!vor~,201d41) of the plague that hit Athens in 430 BCE.There is no indication that Socrates does not mean this seriously, and so regardess of the fact that such an act wouid be of very linle, or even only negativetXconsequence, it undeniably sets her beyond the pale of ordinary humanity in her nligious

a. In addition, the "vision"

that she describes as constituting the ''final nvelation" seems to match Burkert's Benardete goes so far as to blame Diotima for Athens' losing the Peioponnesian War* since she caused the plague to strilre at the worst possible time (73). We must agree this mantic feat e m s her a rather dubious distinction.

description of the goal of the mystery cults generally:" her language leaves no doubt that ihis vision is an exüaordinary "personal experience of the sacred" that leadr to a "change

of

Finaily, we might repeat the oft-noted point that her name, M a v n v t H ~

Arodpa~(201d2), positively jingies with religious authority and seems to suggest 'Zeushonoured mantic-wo~nan."~~ Mantics were, of corne, just the sort of people to conduct othen in mysteries. It is highly unlikely, then, that Diotima is intended not to be sincere in her use of reiigious terminology, and that when Socrates describes her manner as king

"like a perfect sophist [Oonep oi ttAeot o o @ r u ~(208cl) a ~ he means that she is indeedjast a sophist, and no more. A more promising aitemative might be to take Socrates as himself skeptical about the value of the rites, though very interested in what Diotima has to teach about Eros.

There could even be a hint of such an attitude in the passage from the &a&

that we

quoted e d e r . There he says: Perhaps these people who direct the religious initiations [ 5 4 d e r à ç ] are not so far fiOm the mark, and al1 the time thm has been an allegorical meaning [aivineu0al] beneath their doctrine...(69~3-4) It might not be stretching the sense too far to translate this as, "Maybe they're not so

crazy after all," and to take Socrates' words as indicative of a skepticîsm towards such mysteries that he standardly shared with his philosophical companions. Then the only

thing of value to the philosopher in the mysteries would be the truth that lurks beneath their "riddling" -none other than the allegorical (and philosophical) exposition of the

meaning of the Bw. Applied to Diotima's case, this would explain why Socrates was "Cf. 126, above. The one feaîure of Burkert's definition tbat is missing fiom Diotima's account is secrecy. This, as we shall see below. is matenal to the understanding of the dialogue as a whole. 18 Cf.B u y xxxixf.; Dover (137) takes the name more ambivalently.

silent about his own experience of the rites: he has none. It would also explain why Socrates seems content with the account of Eros that he possesses: having understood the account and tested it logîcally to his satisfaction, he sees nothing of value to be gained

h m going through with the rites themselves. To see why this interpretation also is inadequate, regardless of how appeaiing it

may be to our twentiethsentury sensibilities, requires looking at the rrlationship that Diotima sketches between Eros and philosophy. There are two separate aspects to this relaîionship, one articulated in the account of the preliminary mystenes (or the mystenes

''thus far,"209e5), the other in the account of the final mysteries. From the former, we leam that Eros is himself a philosopher: he yeams antr bowledge and is full of resowe and is a lover of wisdom al1 his life [~iAoao$6v 6rdr x a v t 6 ~toc piou], a skilful magician, an alchemist, a true sophist. (203d6-8)

This admittedy ambiguous staternenp is made more precise in the lines that follow. We are told that Eros is neither wise nor ignorant: go& are wise and so do not desin wisdom, while the ignorant do not desire wisdom either, for thinking that they already possess it.

Eros occupies an intemediate state because though he does not possess wisdom, he is aware that he does not possess it, and therefore desires i t The similarity of ihis to Socrates' own claim to wisdom in the &&gy

"

is striking and unmistakable. Here in the

Diotima calls Etos a philosopher and a sophist in the same breath at 203d7-8.If by "'sophist"Diotuna means "a wise man" then she immediately contradicts hmelf at 204a1-2 But in these hes.it seems Iürely that she means given the beavy emphasis on Resource "sopbist"not as b'wk,wbut as "capable." The quivocation of these two tnms (wise and capable) as they apply to the sophists is a fccus of much of Plato's attention in the eariy dialogues. Soctates expresses no doubts that îhe sophisîs an capable, but he does question whether they are wise (e.g., esp. 366d-e& 373c-376~);the delphic oracle in &&gy denies the existence of wise men. This description of Eros by DiotmLz might also be taken as a hint h m Piato that Socrates, too, LiLe Ems, may weil k @te "capabk" himseIf, i.a, a 6 e t v 6 ~ oo@rarsjçin Diotima's sense.

we have, "No god is a lover of wisdom or desires to be wise, for he is wise

already, and the same is true of other wise persons, if there be any such" (2Ma1-2). while

in the &&gy

Socrates says:

1 have gained this reputation, gentlemen, from nothing more or Iess than a kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom do I mean? Human wisdom, 1 suppose. It seems that 1naily am wise in this limited sense. Presumably the geniuses whom 1mentioned just now are wise in a wisdom that is more than human. 1do not h o w how else to account for it. (20d6c2)40

At his triai, Socrates means that he is not really wise at all, but that he is superior to other

men in not king "ignorant," and in therefore desiring wisdom: he occupies the middle state. Eros, then, shares in what Socrates nluctantly calls "human wisdom" in the and is not just a philosopher, but a socnitic philosopher, or better, Socrates is an

erotic philosopher, and this, it ~ m out, s really is the only kind, since Eros' feanires are effectively being used to defVe philosophy. This doctrine, by itself, does not appear to depend on any experience of the "rites," and so this wouid appear to be an example of a valuable lesson that any philosopher could and should like to leam, in îùll, from Diotima's

m. In the

a, for example, Socrates does not even attribute this lesson to Diotima,but says he figured it out for himself by üying to decipher another "mantic" riddle

-Chaerophon's

delphic oracle. But while this might at first seem to support the "skeptical" interpntation of Socrates' approach to Diotima's rites, we must not overlook certain features of her definîtion. Fit,Eros (and, therefore, philosophy) has an intrinsic orientation towards the divine pole of its existence (eg., to be wise, like a god). Eros desires that and strives to anain it. Second, erotic activity (inchhg philosophy) has an gppn (206b3), or "task" -

"Englkh quotations h m the &&gy

are translateci by Tredennick (Hamilton & Cairns).

139

we might even say, "a mission" -namely, to generate the good by means of the beautifid (206e7-207a4). If we bnng these two features together (the intrinsic desire for the divine,

and the erotic

m,it would appear to folIow that the highest goal of human life and

philosophy is tu generate the most divinely good by means of the most divinely beauti$ùl.

This t m s out, at the end of Socrates' speech, to be precisely what the final revelation,

- and only the final revelation -can make possible: Do you not see that in that region alone where he sees beauty with the faculty capable of seeing it, will he be able to bnng forth not mere reflected images of goodness but tme goodness, because he will be in contact not with a reflection but with the truth? (212a2-5) This mission and this means, then, are part of the definition of the philosophical life that Socrates has learned h m Diotima's preliminary teachings, and that he has passed dong to this gathering. It is also what he claims to believe himself

-so much so that he tries to

convince others of it (212b1-4).It is therefore not possible to assume that Socrates is an enthusiastic student of Diocima's doctrines while at the same time a skeptical rationalist with no use for her "magicai" or "superstitious" ntes. Her doctrines entai1 that her ntes

are one @utnot the only) goal intrlnsîc to philosophy itself: one may well be a philosopher @or to achieving the vision of the beautifid:'

but the quaiity of one's Iife

and one's philosophy increase immensely upon naching that goal. Therefore one cannot

both understand and believe Diotima, as Socrates claims to do. without desiring the consummation of the final rites,

T d n g now to Diotima's teachings about those final ntes (209eS0212a7),we find that philosophy is not merely a sufficient condition of erotic activity (dong with, e.g.,

sexud nproduction) that contains those ntes as a necessary goal, it is also itself a

necessary condition of achieving t a For . as one climbs the "ladder of love" h m the lowest rung of love for a single boy upwards towards the epoptic vision itself, it is by means of speeches

w)that the

of Eros is fulfilled at each stepd2-

specificdiy conversations directed at the bettement of others. The highest and final rung is speech in the form of philosophical conversations, because it is philosophy that abstracts most ftom the particulars of this world and trains one in the abstraction that m u t become habitual before "beauty itself' can be perceived: having his eyes fixed upon beauty in the widest sense, he rnay no longer be the slave of a base and mean-spirited devotion to an individual exarnple of beataty, whether the object of his love be a boy or a man or an activity, but, by gazing upon the vast ocean of beauty to whidi his attention is now m e d , may bring forth in the abundance of his love of wisdom [@tÂooo@iq]rnany beautifid and magnificent sentiments and ideas [ x o u o ù ~~ a \~ a A o ù ~ A6youq ai peyaloxpexei~ r i ~ q itai 6iavoqpasa], until at last, strengthenedand increased in stature by this expenence, he catches sight of one unique science whose object is the beauty of which 1 am about to speak. (21Oc7-e1) Obviously, not everyone is capable of this. Even those who are capable will not succeed if they do not approach the rites "properly." That is why Diotima's teachings are so valuable: they hold the secret to the way of Me that leads through philosophy to the final revelation of the mysteries of Eros, which themselves consist of a breathtaking encounter with divine beauty and enable one to iive a truiy good Me.There is no mention of any rites kyond these; it would appear that once one has experiencedlhem one has i n b d

made the grade

42

-"like a perf'e~t~~ [tt%eoi] sophist." By thus describing philosophy

Cf. 210a8, cl. & d5.

" This English translation is pdcuiarly

apt: ''petiect?is quite nolmal to translate the "final" rites in such cdts g e n d y , and c m even be used in the nominative to refer to someone who bas received thun,Le.. to caii someone "a prfcct" But aven Diotima's stress on the %uetT gocdness (2124 bat can iesult k m these partïcuiar rites, it tums out that a b'pfkct" in this cuit rnay weU be ''perfect" in a broader ptiilosophicai and moral sense.

(pcusued properly) as a necessary condition of the final revelation, and the final step prior

to achieving it, Diotima has almost, but not completely, identined the two. To identify

them completely would be a "category miscake:" philosophy is a life's work, beginning early and continuing until death in old age, as in Socrates' case. The,however, remain a single episode in a philosopher's life that changes him or her forever aftec these mystenes are part of the philosophical Me, properly pursued. Such a doctrine agrees perfectly with the mystery-laquage passage that we quoted from the "Weil, in my opinion these &votees

m:

-initiates who have genuinely bem 'taken

by the go<] are simply those who have lived the philosophical üfe in the nght way." All of this together makes a very strong case for Socrates' cornmitment to the

pursuit of the final revelation. And Plato has certainly portrayed him as conducting himself accordingly, by approaching "beautiful"individuals whenever possible and

engaging them in philosophical conversations

-conversations that are always tinged

with a concern for the beiierment of al1 con~erned.~ But nowhere does Socrates

personaiiy declrire for us any more than he does here in the

that he has in fact

experienced the final revelation Diotima &scribes." We must therefon conclude that we

are left stiil wondering, upon the completion of Somates' speech praising Eros, whether he has aiready reached the ''top of the ladder" or whether, in 416 B a , he is still slowly

making his way to the top. And as for the question of his guilt or innocence in

155c-e, There are many examples. but the most explkit are perhaps 227f(the h t and 1st of which arr &O accompanied by language 309. and suggestive ofmystenes). ~ h &a& e passage we have been referring to is perhaps the closest Socrates cornes in this regard, as it wodd be odd if Socrates, on his deathbed, were not including himseif in the class of "those who have lived the philosophical Me in the nght way" -he does not appear to have any regrets.

"

"profaning" Diotima's holy mystenes, we can hardiy charge him with profaniag something when he has not claimed to have experienced such rites or said anythng that would betray his personal experience of them.

b3) Socrates and Aikibiades

In sharp c o n m t to Socnites' talk of the mysteries, which soberly relates arguments and explanations but ventures no hint of personal experience of those mysteries themsel~es,~ Aikibiades' speech conveys nothing but personal experiences in vivid and mernorable detail -including even his first-hand expcrience of the "madness and fnnzy of philosophy [ q q ~ I ~ O U O ~paviaq O U r e K a 1 Pa~xelad."But since it is first and foremost a speech in praise of Socrates, this means we are presented with an intimate portrait of the man from one side of a close and long-tenn personal relationship. It promises a unique and penetrating insight, which we might however cüstrust were it aot for U b i a d e s ' repeated insistence that he is telling the truth, and for his invitation to Socrates to correct the siightest error:? For this is not a relationship for

"Even Diotima never morts to the fit-penon in her accounts. and often seems to p ~ f e r

the third-person, which must at least raise the question whether she herseif is a philosopher of the sort she is preparing Socrates to k.IIU she even experienced these rites herself? Or is she menly a mantic facilitatorof other people's progress? "This empbds on Aikiiiades' mith-telling has puuled many commentatocs. some of whom (e.g, Schein) go on to conclude in spite of it that most of what Alkibiiades says is fdse. Yet the undeniable eff'ect of the lines is to show Socrates declining to correct even a word of Aikibiades' spetch, and in the absence of any clear indication that Socrates is hesitant to intemene with a necessary correction. this can oniy guarantee the üuth of what Alki'biades says. The relevant question is why anyone would doubt Aikiiiades' woids in the am place, so that such a voucher shodd be needed; the answer is thaî it is weU known that Alki'biades has tumed agaiast Socrates, as even he admits (213d7-S),so thatthese listena (mcludmg Socrates himself, 213dl-4) actually expect himto slanderSocrates, given such an opporhxnity to speak, hstead of praising him. This explains the excbange between thcm at 214el-5,where AUa'biades bnefly teases Soaates with this very urpectation before fkst 'teassuring'' h i .that what he says wilI be only the üuth. It &O explains the knowing Iaaghter of the crowd when he W h e s , because his speech actuaily belies bis hostility, reveahg it to be a pntense masLmg the fact that Aikibiades is stül in love with

which AUribia&s is gniteful. Despite aii of the remarkably good things Aikibiades can

find to say about Socrates, we hear no dedaration of how Iucky Akibiades considers

himself to be to have met and befriended such a man;* instead we hear intimations of violence, revenge and death. It is, as AUribiades himself admits, a tale of ultimate failun, his own failure to win a prize he has valueci, and continues to value, immensely. Having

failed to achieve that p n ~the , sight of it can only bring pain -the more pain the more glorious the prize -and that pain has tumed to resentment. To this. Plato adds a final touch of pathos: what Alktbiades portrays as an ultimate failure, and what the reader, with hindsight, knows to be such, is nonetheless denied within the confines of Alkibiades' own

heart. But despite his bluster and his threats he cannot conceal from this "knowing" crowd his deepest humiliation of dl: he is still in love with Socrates, still dreaming of the &y when Socrates might be his (222~1-3).

And what does this privileged point of Mew reveai to us about Socrates? Perhaps

two things most of all: h t , there is testimony concerning aspects of Socfates' character that could never be descnkd by S m t e s himself and that would not k evident to most observea.

second, there is the effect that Socrates has had on Aikibiades, and in

So~rate (222~1-3). ~

In this respect AUaihiades is utterly different h m Apoliodoros and Aristodemos -and h m Phto -who cannot priais Socrates bighly enough and never cease h m dohg so. 49 1.e. would not be evident to most phtonic interloaitors or even the platonic narrators* such as Phaedo, Aristodemos and Apo~odoms.ûne of the consnaints of the dialogue form seems to kjust U s : Plato cannot objective@tell us anything flattering, unflattering, or "private"about Socntes except through othen' testimonies. Whether those testimonies are fiiendly (as at LgCheS 187d-188% 174a, 176~)or hostile (as at 337a. 369b-c). they are always compiicated by concerns about the intentions and the authority of those rrpozting hem. Perhaps d y Crito and ~lki'biades.of ail the charactas in Plato's dialogues, are m a position to give a reliable iniimate report, but Crito never d m That maices this speech,with its emphans on mith, very spcciat hdeed. E.g.. Rosen observes, '?n the dialogues. Plato never explains himself. Iiistead, he assigns to the dmnken AUEi'biades an exphnation of Socrates" (x"Prefaceto the Second Edition").

parîjcul the effect of Socrates' talk. Alkibiades' explicit use of mystery-language is restricted to the latter, so we will consider that first, before turning to the implications of that mystery-language for our understanding of Socrates' person.

Akibiades resorts to the language and imagery of mystenes almost immediately upon beginning his speech. Somtes, he says, is like Marsyas,the mythical satyr who stumbled upon a pipe made by the go&, and who found that by simply blowing into it he could make beautifid music -the pipe played itself. The music was so beautifil that Apollo felt threatened and chdenged Marsyas to a contest, which the god won only by trickery. This music, however, was not simply beautifil: it also had a special effect on the people who heard it:

His productions alone [sà éiceivou pôvor], whether executed by a skilled male performer or by a wretched Bute-girl, are capable, by reason of their divine origin [61à r6 0eia dval], of throwing men into a trance [ K U ~ ~ E U to ~ seize, ~ I : possess] and thus distinguishing those who yeam to enter by initiation into union with the go& [6qslLoî TOÙC TGV0eôv se rai sekerôv 6eope'voug]. (215~3-6) Unlike Marsyas, however, Somites needs no musical insrniment; he produces this effect with his "mere words" [ q ~ l o16yoy, î ~ 215~71.Nanirally, Alkibiades' audience and the

reader alüre am apt to suspect hyperbole here, so he takes pains to establish the accuracy

of his report. Socrates' talk, he says, is on a whole other plane of effectiveness from that of Pericles, whose 'bsupuiontyin oratory was unchdenged" (Dover,

167n215e4):

even an imperfect retebng of Socrates' words can leave women, men and children alike "overwhelmcd and rapt" [émrezAqypévo~tap8v irai ~ a t q 6 p e 0 a2,l5dS-6]. Akibiades is even prepared to swear an oath to confirm his sincerity, and then goes on to desçnbe in more &tail the effect that Socrates' words had, and continue to have, on iiim:

Whenever I üsten to him my heart beats faster than if 1were in a religious fienzy [pâkhv r 6 v ~ o p u ~ a v n 6 v s o vand ] , tears nm down my face, and I observe that numbm of other people have the same experience. Nothing of this kind ever used to happen to me when 1listened to Pencles and other good speakers. (21kl-5) Just as remarkable as these physiological and psychological responses to Socnites' talk is

the intellectual transformation it produces. Alkjbiades' sou1 is thrown into confusion by the thought that his life is no better than a slave's (215e6-7); it seems impossible to go on living in his present state (216al-2); and, perhaps as a summation:

He compels me to realize that 1 am still a mass of imperfections and yet persistently neglect my own hue interests by engaging in public iife. (216a46)

This is a remarkable portrait. Alkibiades' explicit use of mystery-cult language, his

refusa1 to admit that this is hyperbolic or inappropriate, his (virtuaily) swom testimony that this experience is comparable to Korybantic possession, the metaphor of Marsyas'

pipe, the ernphasis on the tmth of this account, and the nsultant realitation about the meaning of his own Iife,ali work together to portray s m t i c conversations as an example of those very "riRials of a voluntary, personal. and secret character that aimed at a change of mindthrough experience of the sacred" by which Burkert defines mystery cults in

general

11).

If we ask, "Wh& is the 'sacred' that Alkibiades has experienced?," Alkibiades' response would appear to be that Socrates and his talk themselves are the sacred that hc hm experienced. Socrates' talk is the anaiog of Marsyas' music, which had its effect by

king itself divine [hàt6 Beîa e i v a ~ ]and ; that tak, like Marsyas' music. can also be

"played" by anybody (215d3-6).Yet of this same talk we are told the following, later in the speech:

But if a man penetrates within and sees the content of Socrates' talk exposeci, he will find that there is nothing but sound sense inside, and that this talk is almost the talk of a goâ [Excisa be~os&ou& and enshrines countless repre~entationsof ideal excellence, and is of the widest possible application [KU: xlieîora bryoiApat' àpeqç év afisoï~é~ovsacicai éni ~Aeiosov setvov~a~]. (222al-5)

Much the same is said of Socrates hirnself= 1 doubt whether anyone has seen the treasures which are revealed when [Socrates] grows serious and exposes what he keeps inside. However, 1once saw them, and found hem so divine and precious and beautiful and marvelous [oOso Beia ai ~ p w eivat â ai 7UiyicahX ai Baupaarci] that, to put the matter briefly?1had no choice but to do whatever Socrates bade me. (2 16e5-217a2)

This latter quotation is especialiy evocative of the mysteries, clearly kscribing what Alkibiades himself takes to have been an episodic ('4 once saw them"), overwhelming,

and üfe-changing bmsh with something that he can only describe in terms of divinity and

semi-divine beings; Le., Silenes and satyrs.' AMbiades adds that he is not the only person to have been "victimized" in this way by Socrates and his taik, which force a reversal in the roles of lover and beloved; we

hear of Charmides and Euthydemus,famous beauties in their own right, and "lots of others" as weil(222b1-2). He even ends his speech with a warning to Agathon (again, well h o w n for his beauty) not to let himself be victimized by Socrates in this way.

Eisewhere, however, he uses the language of mysteries to characterke a l l of the active participants at this

as victims in a comparable sense -not victims of

Socrates, but of phîiosophy itselfsl He inWuces this passage by way of pleading for

m,

In the Piato telis us of bacchic mystery-initiations that employ dancing by people dresseci as nympbs, Panes,Silenes or satyn, as mimic impersonafions of ''persans in liquof' (815~).The Athenian disapproves of ibis form, as it has nothing to do with war-dances or peacedances In dionysiac cuit g e n d y , the participants' portraya1 as satyrs is symbolic of their state of union with.or presence More the god himself. It is signifiant that AUabiades d a s not identay those present as Socrates' Mctims*

permission to tell something that should not nonnalIy be told He says he was like the victim of a snakebite, whose agony was so great that it took control and &ove him to

"ounageous speech and behaviour" (217e-218a). Such a person is not responsible for himself, and cm be excused -but only by those who have shared the experience. Then he continues: 1 have k e n wounded and stung in my heart or soul or whatever you like to call it by philosophical talk [ h b zôv év @iLooo@iqI6yw v] which clings more fiercely than a snake when it gets a hold on the soul of a not illendowed Young man. Seeing too that your Company consists of people like Phaednis, Agathon, Eryximachos, Pausanias, Aristodemos, as weii as Anstophanes, not to mention Socnites himseif, people who have al1 had your share in the madness and frenzy of philosophy [qc;&koo64ou pavia~.ce ital pa~xeiac]-weU, you shall hear what happened. (218a3-b4)

The people he names cm be told because they have shared the experience, but all others

present -Pi&A&

r e icai d i y p o r ~ o(the ~ 'bninitiated and wlgar," i.e., those who have

not shared in the madness and frenzy of philosophy) -should cover their eus. This passage once agairi strikes the note that philosophical tak is like a rnystery rite. but now

generalizes or abstracts it away from the figure of Socrates himself. Socrates too, like the rest of hem, has been bitten by that adder, whüe it would appear that Aikibiades alone of a i l those present has experimced the full force of Socrates' personal philosophical

"charisma." The "secret" that Alkibiades goes on to reveal is the extent to which he h d a t e d himself trying to consummate a sexual relationship with Socrates; the upshot

of his revelation is the extremity of Socrates' virtue -uolüre that of any normal human

whiie suggestiiig thai these several famous beauties have been. It would appear to confirm that whiie Socrates is wiiüng to tdk philosophy with anybody, he really does focus his greatest efforts on the beautifhi. Godd writes: 'The emtic aspect of Socrates' companionship was presumably evident only m his relations with AUn'biades and otber young men of great promise. For Socrates himseIf (to judge h mAeschines) and for Plato, this erotic aspect of the socratic powa was veiy important mdeed" (The228).

being, so that only "semi-divine" epithets seem appropriate (221c-d). Aikibiades' speech has traditionally not fared well in philosophical criticism, ofkm being dismissed entirely as irrelevant to Plato's philosophy. Among those who take it to be an integral part of the dialogue there are sharply contrasting views of its role. It has often been suggested that the speech is necessary in the

to reveal

something important about Socrates' doctrine that could not be shown or told within Socnites' speech itself. Rosen,for instance, takes Plato to be using Alkibiades to mount

his own critical attack on Socrates' philosophy, and sees Alkibiades' cornplaints as justified in that his account displays a genuine failure on Socrates' part to be properly erotic. In other words, Socrates' (and Diotima' s) Eros literally wrongs Aikibiades, and Plato would have us side with Alkibiades against Socrates in his "indictment" (219~5).

Others use the speech to support a more traditional view of Socrates, e.g.. Waterfield, who points out that Alkibiades' biographical sketch reveals precisely that Socrates is a living example of the penect ( ~ é l e ophilosopher, ~) because bbaccoràingto Diotima, Whie

-stable virtue of the kind Socrates displays in Alkibiades' account -is the product of the philosopher's intercourse with absolute beauty" (xxxviii f). On this account, Socrates cannot claim for himseif the perfection that he in fact displays, for it would be conceited

and he would not be believed; so he, and Plato, need AUnbiades to sing Socrates' praises for him

-to prove that he pracîises what he preaches. In part, these commentators differ

as to w hether Diotima's account of Eros is to be accepted as Plato's own, or w hether it is one that Plato is rejecting. We are in no position to decide that issue (yet), but we can say at least that the preceding analysis of mystery-language reveals how these two speeches

are complementary, how each illuminates our understanding of the other. Both speeches

agree in their Literal description of philosophy as some kind of a mystery cult. and of

philosophical speech as the means of experiencing the rites of that "cult." But whereas Socrates' account is reflective, logical, and concerned to convey an understanding of the nature of Eros (and hence, of the "cult"), Alkibiades' account is immediate, passionate, and metaphoricai, and while it reveals a great deal, it explains very M e . It seems entirely

apprcpiate, then, to understand and explain Aikibiades' experiences by means of Socrates' doctrines, and to illustrate Socrates' doctrines by means of Alkibiades' experiences. This is particularly appropriate in light of the fact that Alkibiades is not

aware of what Socrates has already said, nor was Socrates aware that Aikibiades would be couiing. The two speeches are therefore independent of each other, and any parallels that do emerge will tend to connmi a congruence in fact, not simply in the imagination of

either speaker. Monover, if we makc a couple of reasonable assumptions then the two accounts c m fit together perfectly, "like the broken halves of a single tally" (191d4)."

The fmt assumption we need in order to bring these two distinct versions of the mysteries of "Eros/phi10sophy" together is that to be a philosopher does not entail king a good philosopher, i+., being good-at-doing-philosoph y. For instance, the simple fact that

Alkibiades descnis the other participants as having k e n "bitten" by philosophical talk

and as participaîing "enîbusiasticaily" in the rites of philosophy, has been taken by some to indicatejust how perverted and erroneous Alkibiades' perspective truiy is. Agathon's

In this sense we m u t disagree with Rosen,who writes, The integration of AUa'brades and Diotima woukl ptesumably be desired by neither. They are not like sundered haives of a circularking who, as Aristophanes recomts in bis speech, are d r i v a by Eros to nunite"(xWif). But what have been sundered here are the intellectual and expendal dimensions of these mysmies, h m each other, and they bdong togetherjust as we see them to be in Alki'biades' description of Soctates. Sumtes himself gives os only haif the story, but that daes not mean he is out to destioy or eradicaîe the otba hatf (as, e.g., Nussbaum wodd have it, 197fn.

and Phaedrus' speeches, for instance, have geuerally been recognized by critics as

nadimentary at best, h m a philosophical point of view, while Anstophanes is usually takm to be utterly hostile to philosophy because of his attacks on the sophists, Socrates,

Euripides, and others like them -not to mention the conservative content of his speech

here in the .-

None of them, especially Alkibiades hirnself, has ever been

labeled a "philosopher" by anyone -except Alkibiades. In short, then, he simply can not

be correct in this; moreover, such a blatant inaccuracy casts into doubt everything else that he says as weil. However, we m u t not overlook the qualification that both Socrates (in the

EhPe;dP)and Diotima stress in their connection of philosophy to mysteries: the final rites are for those who have lived the philosophical life in the proper fihion [6pûôQ only (PhBPdP 69d2;Svmwaum 210a2, a4, a6, e3,21 lb5, b7). We might Say then that there

are two classes of people excluded from these final rites: those who do not live the

philosophical life properly, and those who do not lead the philosophicai life at all. These

classes are not difficuit to distinguish. Diotima gave us the critenon near the beginning of

her teachings. The philosophers, like Eros, occupy the "in between" state, they achowledge their ignorance and they desire to lem; the non-philosophers, on the other

hand, are content in their ignorance. Yet to distinguish between the properly and

improperly practising philosophers is more difficult. Diotima lays out her "right path" for the "pilgrirn" who would achieve the final rights, but it is not easy to apply this as a test to the characters h m Plato's dialogues to determine whether or not they qualify. That

would perhaps require even more familiarity with their biographies than Plato could reasoaably expect of his naders. Pehaps the best we can do is to give a formal definition, 151

bbA-TELEor'

PHILOSOPHERS

PHILOSOPHERS

,

Those who iive the philosophicd life

NON-PWILOSOPHERS

Those who do not iive the philosophicai iife

Those who "deomtnoi" gods and initiations

Those who do not 'bdeoamoiwgods and hitiations

\

Initiation via the vision of the Beautifd, w hich supervenes upon philosophical talk

(a)

\

Initiation via the music of Socrates/Marsyas

--

i.e., philosophicd taik

such that hem is a class of "philosophers" who genuinely desire wisdom and pursue it. but who will never achieve t a teleacause they have not conducted theniselves in the right way a d o r have not been guided properly by a mentor. We might

then reasonably ask whether it is really so obvious that the participants in this do not belong in such a category. In fut7our analysis would appear to provide us with a

schema relating gradations of participation in these mystenes that allows us to formulate these sorts of questions more precisely (Figure 2). Where should we place Phaehs, Agathon, and the others, in this schema? What about Socrates? And how might we tell?

A second assumption that is needed to bring Socrates' and Alkibiades' mystery-

language together into a single account is that one can experience these mysteriu without

necessarily understanding what one has experienced or what it means. M e r dl, Alkibiades described the "korybantic" effect of S m t e s ' words but said that they had this

same effect even on chilcim. Were one to ask those children to describe what had just happened to them,then clearly they would not give an account such as Smates received

h m Diotima. They might, however, give an account N e Alkibiades' ,in lems of what they felt -how they were swept off their feet and ovenvhelmed by a desire for more of the same. Just like the lover who in pursuing a beautiful young person for sexual purposes

is unaware that he is actually attempting to "procreate the good by means of the beautiful," so too may the potential philosopher (someone "in need of gods and initiations," 2155-6), swept off of her feet by her f h t exposure to philosophicai talk, be

unaware that she has taken ber first steps on the road to a vision of Beauty itself and supreme virtue. If this is the case, as seems likely, then it is possible that Alkibiades has experienced the rites of philosophy without hearing the doctrine -or at lest without heeding the doctrine

-and hence without understandhg what has happened to him.

These two assumptions (that exposure to philosophical taik can inspire a love of wisdom without conveying any phiIosophical abilities whatsoever, and that the

psychological
shoes (assuming Diotima wore shoes), meeting a young student who says he is intensted in pmuing a career in philosophy. She rnight give the saident counsel, attempt to convey

to him what spiritual rewards the profession holds in store for those who are capable, aLl the time not knowing whether the student has really "got what it takes," and therefore

hesitant to recommend a career choice. And for al1 her advice and guidance, she might never realize that she is dealing with a student who is aiready quite "philosophically active." On the other hand how many professors have met studenu who are simply

thnlled with their philosophy books and lectures, but for whom an essay with even the argumentative force of Agathon's speech would be a dowmight miracle?

If these assumptions are acceptable as connotations of the mystery-language of the

,-

then there would appear to be linle standing in the way of uniting the

accounts of Socrates and Alkibiades and mapping them ont0 the schema in Figure 2. Such a procedure would appear to support several interesting inferences. First. there are some present here at this svmm>sion who belong in the lowest categories ("a7' or "b"), the

''$éPqA6~TE itdk y p o r ~ o ~in' ' Alkibiades7words, including the slaves and anyone else with no previous involvement in philosophical talk Second, there are many present who

belong at l e s t at the second stage (categories "c" or "d"), namely, Aristodemos and ail of those who gave speeches; they have known the "adder's bite" of philosophical talk, and have thus been initiated into the "cult" of philosophy/Eros. Nor is there sufficient reason

to doubt that these people occupy the "in ktween7' state of philosophy. Of course, there is

a sense in which, according to Diotima's doctrines,all living things occupy that "in between" state, for Ems tums out in the long run to be none other than nature itself. But the fwidamentally erotic nature of all Living things is not what is at issue h m . With

regard to wisdom, these speakers, unlike moût human beings, have al1 carried their erotic

impulse into the domah of speech and r e m ()LQyouç ai biavo@ara, 210d5-6). Both Agathon and Aristodemos desperately want to get (or leam) Soctates' 'insdom." Anstophanes' myth talks of humanity's deepest desire king for an unanainable "other"

h m what it is at present. Eryximachos is a medical scientist and naturalist, and gives the speech that more than any of the others resembles genuine presocratic philosophy.

Pausanias gives a speech dincted at reforming the Iaws of Athens, which at least f o d l y gives him one leg up on Diotima's ladder. And Phaedrus even more than the rest is

obviously a lover of

u, beautiful talk -especially if it concems Eros. On top of

this is the simple fact most of them are explicitiy portrayed as sexuaily active here, in the context of Socnites' teaching that Eros is philosophical. Admittedly, ail of these putative b'philosoph~"have senous deficiencies that many scholan have identified in &tail, e.g.: Phaedrus cornes across as an egoist; Pausanias is a self-inimsted sensualist; Agathon a vacuous fop; and so on. But this was precisely the point of our fmt assumption: these people may indeed be incompetent at doing philosophy, but that in itself does not mean that they are not still somehow motivated by the spirit of philosophy and do not participate in the "Korybmtic rites" of philosophical talk. It would be a very intensting exercise to investigate in detail the evidence Plato presents for locating these people more

precisely within our schema (Figure 2). Of particular interest, given the narrative structure

of the dialogue, would be the placement of Anstodemos and Apollodoros. But for now it is sufficient to place them somewhere in the middle position.

This brings us to Socrates and Alkibiades, whose speeches are directly related by their cornplementary use of mystery-language. One thing seems clear, at least: that

Diotima's mysteries "thus fax? (210a), the actual

ato which Socrates could

"probably" be initiated correspond to the experience of genuine participation in philosophical talk; no more and no less. Her "teachings" about those mysteries (2Ole210a) primarily concem the nature of Eros, and this includes the nature of philosophy.

Monover, they mostly take the form of the typical socratic m. as if Diotima were "sounding him out." No doubt, to someone intent on pursuing philosophical talk more seriously, it would be of great benefit to understand what that project involves, where it leads, and how it relates to the rest of human Iife. Diotima teaches dl of this to Socrates, but still these doctrines themselves are not the same thing as "doing" philosophy. They help one to understand what philosophy is so that when "the adder bites," one will know how to take it and benefit from it. To recall Pieper's metaphor of &as suggestive of the narcotic effect of a h g , we might compare the contrast between un unguided and a properly guided philosopher with the contrasting experiences of a drug-addict and a self-

medicating doctor." A good doctor, who (ex hypothesi) understands the dnig (what it is for, and how to use it) still experiences the same narcotic effect as the hg-addict when she takes the dmg, but she conducts her Ive in such a way that the drug works for her, and not against her. To apply this metaphor to our text, Socrates and Diotima are like doctors explainhg the nature of a wondrous and powerful drug that can help us to produce the best in human life, if handled properly. Alkibiades, on the other hand, gives the testimony

of an unschooled dmg-addict. But by relating this back to Socrates and the rest of the

participants, he reveais that they, too, are "users." It would appear to be a mistake, then, to see Socrates' detached reflectiveness, coolness, logic, and calm as entirely characteristic of the life of philosophy that he and

Dioiima recommend. As has always been obvious, Aikibiades' speech flatly contradicts that view of Socnites, h m the perspective of sorneone who could perhaps rightly clairn to know himbetter han anyone else. In fact, it seems likely that the tendency to discard

"It is not insignifiantthat the seif-medcatingdoctor of the svrnwsium recommenàs that

drinlringis bad for you, and shouid be avoided except in moderation.

Aikibiades' speech in the

and to concentrate almosi exclusively on that of

Socrates/Diotimahas contributed in no smail degree to the evolution of what Anton calls the ''puritanical" view of PIato in Western scholarship. By giving Socrates only half the

account -the detachai, doctrinal, "philosophicai" half -Plato has seemed to many critics to authorize a one-sided, purely rationalistic, and anti-dionysiac view both of

himself and of his philosophy. And as Nussbaum's work illustrates, it is not enough just to rediscover the value of Alkibiades' speech; one must also be willing to take what it says at face value. According to Nussbaurn, for instance, Plato has added Alkibiades' speech in order to force a dilemma upon us: these two types of Eros are so utterly distinct that we cannot have botfi, so we must choose, and each choice involves the sacrifice of a

supreme value. Shall we follow Alkibiades, who represents humanity, vulnerability and also tragedy?; or follow Socrates, who represents ultimate security and invulnerability but at the cost of human care, human attachment, and even hurnanity itself? Plato then uses Alkibiades -his biography, and the very condition that he has aiiowed Socnites to manoeuver him into -as evidence for why we should choose "philosophy" with its stone-like invulnerability. This choice, however, presented in this way as a dilemma, is tragic itself, and so Plato's project is in a sense ultirnately self-defeating. Better to take our chances, cast our dice with Alkibiades, and Iive a human Life with al1 its attendant

human risks. This, Nussbaum's nading of the ,

exhibits in pcrhaps its most extrrme

form the traditional antidionysiac view of Plato and of the svrnwsium. As she says herseif, ' n i e Symposiwn now seems to us a harsh and alarming book" (198); we must agree, on her readmg. But we do not need to see Socrates and Aikibiades as antagonistic

in this sense. Rom Alkibiades we leam that Socrates did indeed participate in the

'"madness and frenzy" of philosophy, and continues to do so, for this is none other than philosophical talk itself -Socrates' major preoccupation. His calm extenor is deceptive and conceais a sou1 possessed by a korybantic rapt-

a rapture that spreads to (some)

others when he engages them in his peculiar brand of conversation. If anyone at this represents the h e anti-dionysiac philosophy that Nussbaurn has attributed to Sacrates it is Eryximachos. the rationalistic doctor who eschews drunkenness and who departs when the party gets out of hand We may suspect Eryximachos of employing this

"dnig." philosophy, precisely to reduce his dependency on drugs: "My medical experience has convinced me that drunkenness is bad for people" (176~8-d2).Alkibiades addresses him while passing mund the wine: "Ah Eryximachus...best of sons of the best and soberest of fathers" (214b3-4).hardly a compliment in the circumstances. While Alkibiades is al1 passion and no doctrine (and hence no control), Eryximachos is just the opposite. all doctrine and control, with very little passion. Socrates. however, combines these two sun&red halves into one whole person, though we could never have told thut from his speech alone.

There is still more to this account of the mysteries themselves, however, for as we know h m Socrates' speech there are two distinct levels of initiation into the rnysteries of

Ems. We have so far discussed oniy the fïrst, '?he madness and hmzy of philosophical

talk." But what about the final mysteries, t a ? Has Socrates also participated in these rites and thereby eamed his ticket into category (e) of Figure 2 (i.e., the "teleoi" philosophers), or is he still to be classed in section (c) with those who are on the right track to the final revelation but have not yet achieved it? Alkibiades' speech can

help us here as well. His mystery-language refers both to philosophical talk and to godlike and exceedingiy beautiful [xkyuaAa] images he has seen. His speech even

concludes by bringing these two experiences together: Socrates' talk is itself godlike, and

contains images of perfect virhie. Yet Akibiades has not "seen" these beautiful images with his eyes: they are to be found "inside" Socrates and "inside" his 1QMi,which

suggests some kind of mental perception or understanding. We are reminded of Diotima's terminology: "where he sees beauty with the faculty capable of seeing it" (212al-2). U b i a d e s seems unable to describe this experience literally, so that he must speak metaphorically or "by means of images [k'eir6vov]" (215a5). Moreover, Socrates is absolutely unique in this regard. Al1 of the others are fellow initiates in the "fknzy" of philosophy, but none of them has ever seen what Alkibiades has seen, and what can be

sem only in Socrates: the godlike beuuv at his core. This language strongly suggests that something very special has happened between these two men that goes far beyond even the ordinary rapture of philosophical talk. Given the context, then seems little doubt that

Alkibiades has somehow managed to experience both levels of initiation into the mystenes of Ems, and that, in his perception of it at least, the vision of beauty came rhrough Socrates.

This reading mates a nurnber of very interesting questions and problems. For even if we are willing to accept that Alkibiades is somehow moved by the spint of

philosophy and has therefore been exposed to the lower mysteries, still we cannot accept that Plato means to place him in the class of "perfect"philosophem. If Alkibiades was

exposed to Beauty "itself,Ven why did he hm out the way he did? Codd Plato be trying to tell us that Socrates' philosophy and his "vision of the Beautifiil" is so very

ineffective that AUcibiades could just hun his back on it (like he says) and continue king the rotten person we ali know him to have ken? It is perhaps too early to attempt to

nsolve this problerns, without reference to other of the dionysiac aspects of the dialogue (see below, ChS), but one answer suggested by the ascent passage of Diotima's teachings is that it was Socrates' expenence of the rires that Alkibiades witnessed, not his own. Mer all, Diotima makes it clear that it is by means of philosophical conversations with beautifid young men that the philosopher nses to his fmt glimpses of Beauty itself -and

then the vision strikes. If we are to assume that Socrates has had this experience at al1 then it is likely, if not certain, that he had it in someone else's presence (whether or not the other person shared in the vision). We might well ask who that other person was, and

wonder how this whole flair might have looked ftom the other si& of the conversation. In Aikibiades' speech, Plato may be teiling us? And if the abilities of his interlocutor contribute at ail to the philosopher's ascent (Diotima does not Say, but cornmon sense wouid suggest that they do), then Socrates could hardly have chosen a more able, intelligent, passionate and beautifil boy with whom to discourse. This is the conclusion to which our analysis of the mystery-language points. Y Given the context of bacchic enthusiasm, this rrlationsûip between Socrates and Alki'biades is reminiscent of Socrates' account of *'levelsof inspiration" in the (533d-536b), which uses the image of magnetic rings. In that image, divinity e n m into a sou1h m above, not only drawing that soui upward to the divinity like an iron ring to a magnet but aiso conferring upon that sou1 a meanire of its own magnetic force by which it amans other iron rings. so that, "as h m the loadstone. a mighty chah hangs down" (536a), each Mc anachecl magneticaily to the one above. Socrates ad&, 'We cal1 it king 'possessed,' but the fact is much the same, since he is heW (536b. English translation by Cooper, Hamilton & Caîms). The upward, attractive force is maby a downward emanation fkom individuai to individuai. Sacrates is chidly concemed to but he makes it clear that bis image applies to divine accountfor poetic inspiration in the inspiration generaUy. and he utplicitly mentions Orpheus, the korybants. the bacchants, and "bacchic transport"as examples of this sort of thing. Here in thesvrnwsism. Ems is the name of an attractive force that draws us up to diMnity9and which enters into Socfates by a form of bacchic capture9so that Aliûibiades would appear to be one of the "links" that is "held?' by Socrates' own enthnsiastlL

However, if, as we Say, Aikibiades' portrait is accurate and Socrates is the most rapturous of all of the celebmts of ''bacchic" philosophy, then why did Plato leave us wondering about that? Why did he portray Socrates as restricting himseif to the inteilectual, doctrinal account of the meaning of the mysteries, thereby concealing his own "fienzied"experience of hem? This is a good question, for we must admit that Socrates' speech has created a definite air of "mystery" (in the modem sense) that has led to numerous attempts over the centuries to reconstruct the experience of Diotima's vision in a variety of

not least of all mysticism proper. There is, however, no reason here

not to accept the answer that appears to be supplied by the very images and terminology Plato employs: mystery cults. Plato has chosen to present philosophy in both Socrates' and Alkibiaâes' speeches as a mystery cult. Every mystery cult had its secrets, namely the

experience of the bmsh with divinity that constituted one's initiation. And Alkibiades, we know from history, was a profmter of mysteries at m. By nvealing his experience of something samd in the "cult" of philosophy, he is telling a secret in the presence of

the uninitiateci, as his own words explicitiy declare. The simple answer to our question, then, as to why Socrates is unforthcomuig about his own experiences, is that Plato has placed him within a textual construct that demands his silence, whereas Alkibiades, as a hown profaner, cm be expected to break that silence. Why Plato has placed him within such a.textualconstruct (i.e.,"philosophy as mystery cult," whether literal or metaphorical), cannot be answcred without lwking to the

as a whole, and in

particular to the rest of the interrelateddionysiac aspects of the dialogue which may modify our understanding of this s ~ a i i e d mystery-cdt But given the setting at diis "Pkpefs book is itseff an exampk of such an attempted reconstniction. though baseci primarily on the phædnis.

W. where there is a mixture of people h m both inside and outside of philosophy,%it seems that some sort of profanation becomes necessary even just to reveai are genuine mysteries here at dl. We might ask: How else could PIato show us

that th-

that philosophy reaily is a type of mystery, in such a context, except &y showing it pmfaned?

-

te k&l&&&

C Soctatic

If Allribiades' speech is taken senously and at ?icevalue, as we have argued it should be, then Socrates emerges not as the &tached practitioner of a rationalistic and anti-human philosophy (as hîs speech, taken alone, has led some to believe) but as a successN conjunction of doctrine (or understanding), on the one hand, and an overwhelming passion, on the other? In the ,that passion as telestic &,

Plato has chosen to represent

the "madness" experienced in mystery-initiations, which in

the phaednis Socrates attributes to Dionysos. In the phaednis,however, Socrates

distinguishes telestic kinds of divine &,

from what he caUs erotic

and while he praises ail four

he saves his highest praise for the erotic, which he bnngs directly

into his account of philosophy. This could be taken either as a development in Plato's thinking about

m;as a rhetorical expedient givcn his diffent objectives in the two

dialogues; or even just as the lack of a desire to maintain xigid boundaries between these phenornena. In any case, his choice in die

"

to describe a "mystery-cuitof

is imlike the where everyone who is not a philosopher In this the has been "sent away" befom the convemation begios, and where any taik of mysteries or secreis is apt to f d only on initiates' cars. Le.. Socrates does hdeed represent EiPgSht togetha with Leidmschaft.as Rrllger's titie suggests.

&os" would appear to make it difficult for him to separate the two in that instance (the telestic from the erotic). Given the remarkable emphasis on the dionysiac in the

,

which is absent in the

=.

it seems likely that Plato has cast his

conception of philosophical mania into a specifically

mold in order to bnng it to

bear on that other dionysiac symbolism. Contrary to Pieper's assumptions, then, the way to understand Plato's concept of philosophical inspiration leads not away from the dionysiac associations of mania, but through thern. We shall see more of this in the foiiowing chapters. Let us just note now, in passing, that this reading of the mysterylanguage of the

makes the portraits of Socrates in these two dialogues much

more similar than has traditionally been accepted" But to return to the

in particular, this identification of philosophy as a

kind of mystery cult has interesting consequences quite apart from giving

some

kind of role in epistemology. First and foremost, it assimilates to philosophy the esotericism that is an essential feature of these cults: i.e., the separation of the in-group

h m aU others by means of a shared initiation experience. The mysteries of Eros are even doubly esotenc because there are two stages of initiation, which mates an in-group within the in-group, as at Eleusis. The potential for a political problem lurks within this

esotericism, in that it would appear to be a form of nligious practice (and even of Me) that does not contain the

as one of its variables. What, we must ask, is to be the

The has long kena thom in the ride of PIato scholars precisely b u s e of this perceiveci great diffance. The tendency has been to take the Socntes of Diotima's spech as (e.g., it is very hte, or the nom and to then fhd some way to explain the oddity of the very early). Nussbaum (again, an extreme case) sees the two portraits as JO remarkably different thaî she can explain it only by appaling to a developmentalthesir involving a radical docainal transfonaation and 'keligious" conversion (of the erotic variety) on Plato's p a SimpIy put: between these two dialogues he feu in love, and thereby had a new base of experience to work fmm that he had lacked Wom

relationship between this cult and the state?: subse~ent,as Eleusis appears to have been (at least & facto), or independent? S m t e s certainly shows us what he thinks of statedirectives in the

and we should have to look very closely indeed at Diotima's

speech to find any answer to this question, for she seems to voice no political concems at dl. Of course, there were many private cults in Greek religion, not al1 of them new and not aii of them mystenes, so the problem was not unfamiliar to Greek thinkers and legislators. For example, there was a lengthy stmggle for preeminence between the private family cults (i.e., of noble families) and the Oplis-cuits that fonns part of the story of the emergence of the

itself as a stable political structure in the archaic period

That struggle was even dramatized in classical tragedy; the family-cul&lost."

In Chapter One we consiàered Morgan's attempt to resolve this problem by mapping the mystery-cult of the

ont0 the cult at Eleusis, which was both

politically integrated and famous for its vast numbers of initiates. In a sense, Morgan wants us to see Diotirna's cult as potentially inclusive of everybody,just as Eleusis was: If everyone could become part of the "in-group" then the problem would disappear,

would it not? But on Diotima's account, these mysteries clearly are not going to be for everyone: she notes the difficulty of the effort, the need to do it "just right," and her doubt that even Socrates can succeed*

-which proves that good intentions are not sufflcient.

Morgan's is an appealing strategy, but even if we reshict ourselves to the lower mysteries, we must not forget that what we are taking about here, when ail is said and

"

Examples include Aeschylus' Sopbocles' A m and Euripides Bacchae. against the religious commitments of the noble household, which is each of wûich pits tbe subsequenly destroyd Even with regard to the prelimmary mysteries she is rserved: you couldp r o b d y do it, thus far.

"

done, is philosophy. C m we ~ a I l take y Plato to be suggesting that a i i human beings are philosophers at heart, just waiting to hear Marsyas' pipe? Some modem educators hold views U e that, but few of them are phiIosophy teachcrs. Even Plato's putative philosophers in the

are shown to be resisting its allure (e.g., Eryximachos,

Aristophanes, and, of course, Alkibiades). There was, however, one very famous variety of rnysterytult for which this particular political problem became acute -the very real "mystery-cuit of philosophy"

known as Pythago~eanisrn.Above, we discussed the way recmt discoveries have broken down many of the barriers between bacchic, orphic and pythagorean cult in Socrates'

lifetime. We noted how even if Plato means to mark this -cuit as recognizably bacchic, this still gives him access to a wide variety of ideology, doctrine and practice, especially from southem Italy and Sicily, including the Pythagoreans. Could Plato be trying to associate Diotima's cult of philosophy, either literaily or metaphorically, with the Pythagoreans? It may be relevant here that Plato's Academy was organized in law,

and apparently in every other way, as a

-a private religious cult of the form

typical of mystery cults, both bacchic and pythagorean:

The Academy was a strongiy built institution. It was not a commercial entapnse but a confraternity or sect ...There was still an emotional if not an amorous link between master and pupil. Juridically, like the Pythagorean secf it was a religious association -8iaooç a brotherhood dedicated to the Muses6' and, after his death, to the apotheosized Plato -a wise precaution, soothing the susceptibiitiesof a bigoted democracy ever ready to accuse the philosophers of impiety...Slato had chosen [its location] not for its convenience...but for its nligious associations. For it was a holy place, made famous by many legends which were used as an excuse for repuiar fimeral garnes. It was close to a numbet of sanctuaries consemted to the infernal

-

'' Here we see a possiibk further overlap of the categories of Phaednts*

distinguished m the

gods Poseidon, Adrastes and Dionysus." ( M m u 670

It seems a very real possibility, then, that Plato has the Pythagoreans in mind when he calls philosophy a mystery cuit in the ,-

but if he does, then the effect is just

the opposite of Morgan's atrempt to associate philosophy with Eleusis. Plato then would

appear to be posing the very incompatibility of philosophy and the pPliri. We cannot decide this issue yet, but it is important to realize that the

may very well be

raising an explicitiy political problem by portraying philosophy as a mystery-cult.Many commentators have argwd that the

does contain a political thesis; attending

to its use of mysteries seems like a p d s i n g way into such a thesis.

Marrou goes on somewhat specuiatively to iink the academic curriculum to the educationai proposals in J a s'%esides lectures, a prominent place was given to the kind of fkiendly conversation that went on during the drinking parties -oiyinclata"(68).

- Chnpter Three Tragedy, Mysteries and Wine

We argued in the fint chapter that a contest between Socrates and Agathon that is somehow to be played out over the course of the

is stmngly implied at 175e,

with Dionysos narned as judge.' While most of the commentators we have surveyed

discuss this implication: they also disagree about its nature and significance. Severai of them. taking theû cue from the occasion for Agathon's drinking-party, infer that it is. strictly speaking, to be a contest of poetic ski22 analogous to the one that Agathon had won just two days before, but now with Somites as his chief cornpetitor; these interpretations tend to focus on the relationship between Plato's "poetry" (i.e.. the dialogues) and tragic poetry, and on the end-riddleO3 Of the other commentators, some understand it to be a contest ktween poetry and philosophy per se,' while one takes it to be nothing more than a personal contest of wisdom? The Iast of these opinions has the

WRie of reflecting what Agathon actualiy says:

'%nough of your sarcasm, Socrates," replied Agathon. "We'U settle o u . respective claims to wisdom a little later on [bAiyov Gasepov 61dt~ao6pe8a&y6t e uai où zepi q~ao@iad,and Dionysos. the god of wim, shaUjudge between us [br~ororii~ p h ~ e v o 1 5 Arov6aq]; 4> for the Cf. Chapter Che, #al(14-16); also 8b.l (Kr(iger), 8b.2 (Bacon). 9b.5 (Rosen).

'only Brenùinger, Schein & Morgan make no mention of it.

Bacon, Anton. Clay and Sida. In contrast to Bacon et ai.. Krtiger takes it to be a poetry contest but argues that Somtes

d a s not W y participate, thereby M y separating socratic philosophy fiom ciramatic poeay (much as does Rosen who foiiows m g e r in this). Anderson.

'

moment give your attention to dinner." (175e7-10) Not only those commentators concerned with the dionysiac have adjudged this passage to

be important as a hming d e v i n for what foiiows in the rest of the dialogue! And yet the very meaning of the passage is p d n g -so puzzling that Walter Hamilton, our translater, has felt compeIled to insert a phrase not in the Greek in order to help us out:

"the god of wine." Are we to presume, as Hamilton does, that, for Agathon, wine is somehow to be implicated in Dionysos' judgement of the respective daims to wisdom? At first dance, Plato appears to give us very linle to go on here. Dionysos' name seems to corne out of nowhere and the narrative immediately moves on, leaving this invocation behind. On the one hand, it is extremely odd for wine to be associated with wisdom like this: does not drinking it have just the opposite effect, to deprive one of one's wisdom? Yet on the other hand, the way that Agathon en& the sentence strongly suggests that Hamitton is right: 'but for the moment, give your attention to dinner [vCv 6è

x p 6 ~r6 oeî~tvov ...]."While Agathon gives no hint of how Dionysos' judgement might

manifest itself, this passage shows at Ieast that he expects that judgement to contrast with and foiIow upon the dinner. Heavy drinking is therefore the most likely referent of

Agathon's "Dionysos;" this is, after all, a ,

where heavy drinking was the

natural sequel to the meal? It would appear, then, that Plato has lefi Agathon's meaning deliberately ambiguous, with the result that his reader c m o t avoid the question, "Why Dionysos?" We are forced to pause and consider which aspect of the dionysiac Agathon

has in mind. And if the auswer to this.question is to be wine, then we m u t ask, "Why ..

Eg., Bpry xixf.

'Since Eryximachosbas uot yet proposed the speech-making, Agathon cannot be r e f h g to thaÉ contest.

should wine be invoked to adjudicate wisdom?' Of course, when Alkibiades appears looking like Dionysos (at 212d-e) and gives

out crowns first to Agathon and then to Socrates, we c m see in that action a clear reference to this earlier passage: Alkibiades ~ n i out s to be an image of Dionysos who compares these two men and declares Sarates superior, Alkibiades as Dionysos is then quite üterally the judge of their contest. He does not use the word "wisdom" in handing out his crowns, however, but speaks instead of the cornpetitors' respective abilities with won& (213d8c5). In combination with the earlier passage, then, we may take this "ability

with words" to be an appropriate measure of wisdom. But although this earlier passage takes on a new meaningfor the reader in the iight of Alkibiades' later entrance, thai new

meaning is shictly ironic. It cannot have been Agathon's own meaning because Agaihon was not expecting Alkibiades to appear. Moreover, Akibiades' imitation of Dionysos is

itseIf ironic: the reader sees it but then is no indication that Agathon or anyone else in the dialogue could have expected it or is even aware of it, including Apollodorus -no one commenu on it. As a result, we are still left with the puzzle of Agathon's own meaning when he said that Dionysos would judge their respective claims to wisdom. To take the answer supplied ironicaüy by Aikïbiades (at 212e-213e) as the only sense behind the passage quoted above (175e7-10) would be unsatisfactory, because it amounts to saying that Agathon's invocation does not make any sense dramaticdy. There must have been some fairly obvious sense that Socrates and the others would have seen in Agathon's comment, or they too would have stopped to ask him what he meant. Having noted how this passage brings the "wisdom" of 175e9 into direct conjunction with the "victory with

words" at 213e3, we might weU infer that Agathon's own meaning in invoking Dionysos

will bring a thirâ variable into play here (cg.. wine), and a factor such as that is not to be

ignoreci. Turning to the context for guidance, we may note that the invocation occurs in a

bnef conversation between Socnites and Agathon when Socrates first entem. Apollodoms tells how those present began to eat without Socrates, and how Agathon kept asking after

Socrates during the meal (175~2-6);he then tells of Socrates' entry and relates this bnef skipping ahead to the point when the dinner has been conversation ( 1 7 5 ~ 6 4 0before ) cleared away and the heavy drinking is about to begin (176a1-4). M a t we have in 175~6el0 is therefore an isolated snippet of conversation not direct1y related to the prior and subsequent conversations retold by Apollodorus. This is important because it forces us ta

look closely at these twenty-one lines of context for clues to the meaning of Agathon's enigmatic phrase. One thing that does clearly emerge from this bnef exchange is the suggestion of a noteworthy difference between the wisdom possessed by each of these

men: Agathon's wisdom is of the sort that is clearly manifest to everyone, whereas Socrates' defnitely is not. Socrates says of Agathon's wisdom,"yours is bnlliant

[Aappai],and may shine brighter yet; ...look at the dazzling way it flashed out the &y beforr yesterday before an audience of more than thiny thousand Greeks" (175e4-7). "Aapxpa" can mean not only bright and shining, but clear and perspicuous. By contrast,

Socnites' wisdom is "ambiguous and like a dream [ Q p @ ~ p q q c n p odaxep ~ hp]" (175e34). For Agathon, the sign that Socrates h a gained some new piece of wisdom is

that he has ended his soütudc on the neighbour's doorstep and entered into the social

intercourse of Agathon's party (175d1-2). His wisdom is lÏke a secret that he alone possesses, and Agathon wants him to share that secret. To receive Socrates' wisdom,

Agathon feels he m u t get close to b,even touch him [Ùm6pev&, 175~81- unlike the thousands of spectaton who were al1 exposed to Agathon's "Lapxpa" wisdom together in the theatre.

In Agathon and Socrates, then, we see the popularly acclaimed wisdom of the theaüe contrasted with the more subjective, personal wisdom of a "ciream." This contrast ailows Plato to indulge in Socrates' typicai self--cation

(he calls his wisdom "slight"

[Qaijkq tic], 175e3) while at the same time holding open even here the possibility that Socrates' more b'personal"wisdom is very real and of a fundamentally different sort than most people would recognize. We saw in the previous chapter how Plato uses Socrates' and AlkibiaQs' words later in the dialogue explicitiy to portray philosophy as a type of

bacchic mystery cult. According to that metaphor, saraic wisdom, if there be such a thing, is not conveyed person-to-person but cornes as a flash of insight to philosophers

engaged in conversation with their beloveds. Agathon clearly desires a share of Socrates' private wisdom. He knows that to be enlightened by Sarates he must become intimate

with him, but he is about to make the same rnistake that Alkibiades later confesses to have made. Socrates' response suggests that he understands the sexual overtones of Agathon's offer: It would be very nice, Agathon, if wisdom were W<e water and flowed by contact out of a person who has more into one who has les, just as water can be made to pass through a thread of w w l out of the N l e r of two cups into the emptier. (175d3-7)

Socrates thus responds to Agathon's hint of a possible exchange of sexual submission for wisdom, or m e . which was the typical rationale for sexuai relationships between men, by rejecting it. UnfortitnateIy, says Socrates, wisdom is not like semen; it does not flow

fkom the fuller (older) to the emptier (younger) vessel, as if through a "thad."' It is only later, in Diotima's teachlng, that WC l e m more of socratic "wisdom" and why, as a

passive vision, it is not communicable person-to-person. Agathon's wisdom, however, does appear to be communicable,and Socrates' words describing Agathon's effectiveness

in the theatre are similar to Diotima' words describing the experience of Beauty itself:

"Look at the dazziing way it flashed out [oBro a@dôpaé&kap$ev rra\ é ~ @ a v f i ç &yéveeo]the &y before yesterday before an audience" (175e5-7; compare to 210e).

Uniike Ion (in IPn),however, Agathon does not appear to have a great deal of faith in the

wisdom of his dramatic productions: and he assumes that Socrates is making fun of him by hyperbole; nor does he agree with the low estimation of Socrates' own wisdom. His

accusation of sarcasm (at 175e7) rnakes sense only in this Light: in this "dispute," each attests the other's p a t e r wisdom at the expense of his own.1° Socrates' "sarcasm" lies in w e already see prefigimd h m a platonic critique of that standard rationale for erotic love between menCf 194b.where Agathon suggests that his drama won the prize before an "uncritical audience." 'O This is an important point overlooked by many interpreters, e.g., Rosen (28) and Anderson (IO), both of whom take Agathon's invocation as a kind of bravado. The issue is whether, in invoking Dionysos ta judge tùeir relative degrees of wisdom, Agathon has in mind that he or Socrares is really the wiser. Rosen argues that Socrates has insuitecl Agathon to his face, to wtrich Agathon responds by calling Socrates "w (175e7) in a much more forcefd and Iiteral sense than Hamilton's translationas "sarcastic." Because the water & string analogy with *dom does not hold says Rosen, Socrates' valuation of a seat next to Agathon is the opposite of what he says it is: I vaIue the privilege of sitting beside you very highly (175el):' becornes "Ido not vaiue the privilege of siüing beside you very highly:' i.e.. ''1consider you worthless." Aside fiom mch an inference king fdacious (denial of the antecedent), it seems to fly in the face of Socrattes' obvious desire to sit there. And while it would indeed be rude of Sacrates to say such a tbiug, we shouid hardly expect Agathon to be so offended after he had already declareci himself desbus of Socrates' wisdom; Le., after he had admitted to be wanting in wisdom. But Rosen insult, m v o k Dionysos publicly to declare Agathon the wodd have it that Agathon, stung by wiser and put Socrates in his pIace. The case is in fact just the opposite. Were these two really to go into coutt over th matter (as Agathon's language metaphorically suggesu) then Agathon wouid be prosecuting Socrates for false modesty ,not for denying Agathon any due respext. Sonates' rematks are 'bsarcastic"only because they maintain the obviously false (to Agathon) pretense that Agathon is wiser. Anderson's rrpdsig maLes much the same mi-. He writes: 'FmmAgathon's point of view the reference to Dionysos is understandable- He hasjust received a

declaring Agathon's wisdom to be of far greater value. This contrast between Socrates' and Agathon's types of wisdom therefore

.

manifests another contrast that puts their contest squarely within the jurisdiction of Dionysos: namely, the contrast between the public cults of Dionysos (including the

Lenaia and the City Dionysia) and the esotenc mystery cults of Dionysos. We have aiready seen how closely Socrates is associated with the latter in the ;

Agathon is even more closely associated with the former. Alkibiades says it is their ability with wor& that marks out each of these men as "victonous" over others, and these

two cults contrast sharply in terms of their characteristic modes of speech, or dixourse. The telestic-dionysiac discourse of the rnysteries is intimate and esoteric, and proceeds by

personal conversations ("1Pepi"); it is addressed, always and only, to a few. The dramaticdionysiac discourse of tragedy is public and exotenc, and proceeds by

mgih~ (especially ~ Homeric

and

e); it is always and only addressed to the many. This

contrast of the few and the many has k e n superimposed on Socrates and Agathon in the

.-

For instance, Agathon had woseparate victory celebrations (173a2-7), one

public (the many) and one -this one -private (the few); but Socrates avoided the

former "fkom dislike of the crowd" (174a6-7). Later, it is suggested that Agathon is really et home with the many and feels vulnerable kfore the few:

'1should be forgetfbl indeed, my dear Agathon, if, after seeing your courage and high spirit when you appeared upon the platform with the actors just before the production of the play, and faced a crowded audience without the least s i p of embarcassment, 1 now supposed that you were Iikely to be upset favorable judgement nom Dionysos in the awardhg of the prize for tragedy, and is jolàogly suggesthg the god would award him another favorable judgement" (10). But if Agathon already considard his W o m so superior to Socfates' then why wodd he seek aftcr Socrates' Company the way he does? Socfates' fame and allure lie p d s e l y and oniy in other people's suppositions of his superior wisdom.

-

-

by a handful of people iike us." "But m l y you don't suppose, Socrates, that 1am so stage-struck as not to know that to a man of sense a handfid of wise men is more formidable than a crowd of fools?" (194a8-b8) There are many other occasions throughout his dialogues when Plato likewise associates Socrates and socratic speech with the few-side of this same dichotomy," which only goes to reinforce the generality of Plato's association of somtic philosophy with the privacy and esotericism that is characteristic of mysterytults. It is therefore worthwhile pusing

briefly to consider the extent to which tragedy, as a form of public discourse, ciiffers from

It is a striking contmt. The mysteries, with their

m,their secret mloeai.

and theV intellechializing allegory, are the very definition of esotericism; Athenian

drama, on the other han& was the most exoteric form of poetry known to the Greeks, aside nom Homer. Dramatic poetry was addressed to the entire citizen body and was performed before a sizable hction of it; in this respect, it resembles speech in the democratic Assembly, except that attendance was likely to be higher ai the theatre. N o m Frye has noted a consequence of this sort of performance, while commenting on

the return of oral poetry in our own the:

Poeny which addnsses a visible audience must win the sympathy of that audience, and hence a surface of explicit statement embodying social attitudes that the audience cm share cornes back into poetry. Of the characteristics of an oral culnire that are once again with us, one is what Wyndham Lewis ncognized and deplored as the "dithyrambic spectator." Such poetry demands a consolidation of public opinion."

The name of the audience thus pmfoundly afîected the various genres of ancient Greek Il l2

Poetry*

Eg., &&gg (3 1~03%); (485d); * Frye (150, quocal in Gent% wîth specific""L"e

(363a);

(48a-49a).

ancient Greek cxperience of

pœtry, all of which were primarily oral down to Plato's &y. Whereas Homer and epic

might be called catholic in this regard, lyric was generally composed to be performed before srnail gatherings of a determinate s o d 3In the case of drama, the audience was none other than the pQLig as a whole, and hence the "consolidation of public opinion"

peculiaf to drama was expressly political. Scholarship from the 1 s t several decades has greatly extended our understanding of the relationship between theatre and g&

in ancient ~thens."Old Comedy wears its

politics on its face, as it were, and so its political nature has always been well known; but the same cannot be said for tragedy. That has now changed For one example, Simon

Goldhill has recentiy drawn attention to the way performances of tragedies at the City Dionysia were directly preceded, inside the theatre itself, by a powerful display of civic ideology:

[Tlhe four momenu of ceremony preceding the dramatic festival were ail deeply involved with the city's sense of itself. The Libations of the ten generais, the display of tribute, the announcement of the city's benefactors, the parade of state-educated boys, now men, in full military unifom, al1 stressed the power of the polis, the duties of an individual to the polis. The festival of the Great Dionysia is in the full sense of the expression a civic occasion, a city festival. And it is an occasion to Say something about the city, not oniy in the plays themselves. The Great Dionysia is a public occasion endowed with a special force of küef. This is fundamentally and essentially a festival of the democratic polis. (114)

" Cf.W.R(ls1m'Early Gnek poetry üved thmugh oral pefiormance, and therefore in

situations which were imbedded in the communal Me of Archaic society. As one would expect, these are not random situations, but specific types of situation, which in tum were bound to spefinc social institutions. This fiindamental fact is one which ih interpretet of early Greek poetry ignores at his peril. The more this conviction has k e n exp10d in recent years, the more the symposiun has inevitabiy become the facus of attention....as the central place for the creation and performance of poetry"(230). Gentüi draws quai attention to for instance, with Sappho

m.

(72-89).

"Already in the work of George Tbomçon and Bernard Knox, the politicai dimension of

tragedy had moved to "centre stage." Latet, it was a chief focus of French scholarship, as În the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet More recentiy, Seaford, Goldhill, Meier and others have built substantialiy u p n that e a r k work.

In such a context. the plays and their authors perfonn a social hnction often overlooked by their traditional interpreters." The precise nature of the political ideology that

informed tntgedy has been explored at length by Christian Meier, who argues that dl &-institutions,

including tragedy and the various pPiis-festivals, were created or

employed by the EPlig at least partly as instruments of its prolonged struggle with the nobility, from whom the people had slowly wrested power in the archaic period.16

Rimarily, the aim of such instruments was to unifi the body of the citizenry, for "only through unity could the middle classes match the influence of the nobility" (18); tragedy was a rneans for the citizens as citizens to reflect on their new role and to corne to terms with the unprwedented political conditions:

In tragedy the received, mythical way of thinking engaged with a new rationality. foik culture engaged with high culture. Might it not have served to play out recurzently, by way of myth, the concems of citizens as citizens? It may k that they sought in the plays, in the festival of the Grrat Dionysia, renewed confirmation of their order and its principles, and of the justice of the world However diverse, indeed divergent, had been the politicai positions with regard to the upheaval of achieving fidl democracy, the question of how such a bnak with an order sanctioned by the go& might be assimilated into the traditional world-view was probably common cause for concem. (30

....

l5 Even a severe critic of Goldhül's work Rainer Friedrich, approves of this basic insight: "Goldhüi estabLishes most effectively the political context of aagedy: the text of tragedy becornes part of the larger text of the civic discourse of the polir. This is a signifiant advpnct in the

understanding of Greek mgedy" (263)l6 Meier is not suggesting the simplistic thesis that the tragedians were political backs grinding a party axe: 'This need not mean that tùeir worlcs were coasumed by politics. Nor need the tragedians have adopted a stance on topical political issues, most likely just the opposite. But the evidence catainly suggests that bey did have a political funciion, which must wamiot investigation" (5). Vernant & Vidal-Naquet d t e : The ûagic univene Lies betsveen tsvo worlds belonging both to a past age and to the new values developed so rapidy by the city-state of Pisictatos, Cleisthenes. Tùemistoc1esand PericIes.... h the tragic conflict the hem, the king and the tyrant caiarmy still appear committed to the heroic and mythical tradition but the solution to the drama escapes them. It is never provideci by the hero on his own; it aiways expresses the triumph of the coiIectïve values of the new dernomaticQty-state" (vii).

...

...

Despite the overlaid ideology of panhellenic hegemony in Athenian tragedytL7 the

integration of the pPlis dways remained a main function of chic institutions, including tragedy, throughout the classical period.18 Goldhill, Meier, Seaford and many other scholars have now produced interpretations of particular plays that unfold this political dimension of the genre in detail.19 What al1 of this means for our study is that Agathon's peculiar form of discourse

-at which he excels and demonstrates his "wisdom" -is at least partly concemed with the creation and maintenance of a unifieci, public view of the world This is necessarily a rrligious discourse in that it attempts to locate the citizenry and the pPliS by reference to traditional accounts of piety, justice, and the go&. But, as such, ir is a religious discourse of the muny, the " A O ~ O \ . " Socrates, on the other hand, avoids the public and does not

engage in public s p e e ~ hhis ; ~wisdom and discourse are pnvate, even intimate, a religiou~discourse of the few. However, PIato has located both of these men's peculiar

modes of discourse squarely within the realm of Dionysos: Agathon's tragedy is the peàagogical element of a dionysiac ppüs-cult, while Socrates' philosophical talk is portrayed in the

as the pedagogical element of a dionysiac mystery-cult. And

these two modes of discourse are, at least potentially, hostile to each other. Socrates was put to death on the grounds that his private discourse was undeimining the public l7

Since Alheos was host to many forrignen by the Iate spring when the City Dionysia was 250) which the pplîs used

held, the festivai became an "international" event (Seaford ta pmject an image of itself abroad.

m,

Seaford descri'bes this as the pmdoxicai contradictioa between "centrifugai and centripetal pressures" in the development of the City Dionysia in the sixth ceatury (&@Q& 2491, and Wfites that: "In this rrspect,Panheilenic asphiion and the continuing integration of the polrs go hand in hancl"(251). (115-123); Meier on Aeschyb' oeuvre Cf. GolclhiII on Sophocles' & 28 1-327) &A (62-203); Seaford on Euripides' &&ag and Sophodes' and . &&gy, 3 1c-32a. l8

"

discourse. Therefore, when Agathon says (175e7-10) that they shall go into court over

wisdom, with Dionysos as the judgc, we have been prepared by their prior conversation for far more than a mere contest between their personal degrees of wisdom. As representatives of two contrasting fonns of dionysiac discourse, they symbolize the potential confiict between private and public political discoune as weU as the latent theological conflict between Orphic religion and the traditional Delphic/Homenc religion. Moreover, since this has been portrayed as a contest of wisdom (measured by "ability with words"), it is difficult to see how Dionysos' judgement could avoid king at the

sarne time a judgement of tmth in theology. These considerations can direct us towards a fuller understanding of Agathon's invocation than can be found in the Literatun. He cannot himself have meant to imply this religious/discmive contrast that we have just exposed in his conversation with Socrates, for we have been given no indication that Agathon is himself aware of the association that Plato means to set up between Socrates and bacchic mystenes; that, after dl,is what only Socrates' and Alkibiades' speeches will later reveal to lhis crowd. We have also seen why it is natural to read his invocation as a reference to wine-drinking, albeit with some puzzlement as to why that should be the case. But since this contest of wisdom can also now be viewed as a contest of dionysiac forms entirely within the realm of the dionysiac, it foilows that the Dionysos who judges between them should not be biased in favour of one of them. For instance, to set up the drama-Dionysos as judge in a cornpetition between drarna and philosophy (as Kriiger does) wodd both be prima fade unfair to

phüosophy, and give rise to a paradox when Dionysos awards the prize to Socrates after

a11.f' Iristead, Plato has pruvided an impartial judge by selecting a third fonn of dionysiac

cult-event to act as the common ground within which these two other dionysiac foms (tragedy and sacratic philosophy/rnysteries) can "go to court." This even establishes a

rationale for Plato's choice of the dialogue: the

and of wine-drinking as the context for this

is a neutral space (in dionysiac terms) where a neutral Dionysos

(the wine-Dionysos) may render an unbiased judgement between these two other forms of

cuit and discourse. And, after ail, the Dionysos who does eventually render that judgement is none other than the d m k e n Alkibiades -the only man in the house (at that

time) who is in the power of the wine-Dionysos. This answers both of the questions ("Why Dionysos?' and "Why wine?') that &se immediately in response to Agathon's invocation. Although it still does not

completely resolve the oddity of Agathon's apparent implication that wine can adjudicate wisdom, it shows why it is appropnate for Dionysos to be the judge; and since Dionysos ispresent at this event (primarily, as wine) it is only naniral for his judgement to be

manifested in a fom appmpriate to this event, i.e.. in the effects of wine-drinking. Arrned

with this understanding, we rnay take this unusual implication at face value and presume that Agathon has in mind some raiionale for the ability of wine to discriminate wisdom

-

and that the nahue of ihis rationale will become more apparent to us as the night proceeds, just as he says.

After this fauly elaborate preparation for a test of wisdom by means of wineciririking (175c6c10), it cornes as a shock to encounter Pausanias' proposal just four lines l

d that heavy dnnking be set aside on this particular occasion. This would appear to

*' We have discussedthis problem with Krüger's interpretationabove (29-3 1).

Though Pausanias' proposai is nlated immediatefy foiiowing Agathon's invocation in

contradict the spirit of Agathon's invocation and it throws into doubt whether Dionysos will be allowcd to decide the case as Agathon had predicted: in so far as ihis S Y ~ M ) ~isQ I ~

deprived of its requisite heavy drinking, it is to some extent also deprived of the presence of the god Nonetheless, by means of this proposal a clue to Agathon's rationale is revealed. Everyone present (except for Socrates) had already had a bout of heavy drinking the night before, at the public celebration, and is therefore wary of embarking upon another so smn after. It is Eryximachos' response to Pausanias' proposal that is of interest hem. After checking to see that Aristophanes and Agathon agree with Pausanias,

What a goâsend for us, ...1mean for me and Aristodemus and Phaednis and our other fnends, that you who have the strongest heads [Upeî~o i 6uva~cGraro~ xiveiv] arnong us have given in; we are never able to compete [flpeî~ ...QbBvarorl.1don't count Socrates; both methods suit him equally well [ i ~ a v dyàp ~ uai bp@kepa], and he will be content whichever we adopt. ( 1 7 61-5) ~

This statement effectively divides the participants into three classes according to their capacity for heavy wine-drinking. The first group includes most everyone at the party those who "cannot compete" in wine-drinking contests. The second group contains the "stmgest heads" who presumably can be expected to be in the running to win such contests; this group appears to include only Aristophanes and Agathon, and perhaps

aus sa nias." The third category is nserved for Socrates done, who is marked out as king speciai because he is indfferent [ i ~ a v Q@kepa]. b~ Eryximachos' ebullience is then a

resuit of his discovery that even the "strongest heads" are disinclined to dnnk heavily on

-

ApoUodow' murative, some considerable time bad elapsed between these w o events sufncient for the completion of the m d and the riaial preparations for the drinking Party (176al4)a The ~ference ofEryximachos' "you" ai 176~2is ambiguous as to whether it includes Pausanias as one Of the "sirong" heads or ody the two dramatic pars.

this occasion, which spells relief for the weaker heads. However, this characterization of Socrates as indifferent implies two things. Fit, the previous division carries with it an

inclination to drdc heavily or not: the "weak heads" are disinclined to drink heavily, the "strong heads" are inclined to do so, while Socrates is neitkr. Second, Socrates' inciifference suggests that his capacity may be even greater than that of the "strongest

heads," for although even their limit has been reached on account of the previous night's drinking, Socrates' has not. It is not entirely clear whether Eryximachos himself means

that this is so simply because Socrates was not present the night before, or that Socrates is

known more generally for possessing the ability to dnnk a very great deal despite lacking any comsponding inclination to do so. But his complete confidence in predicting Socrates' answer (so that he need not even ask Socrates, though he is sitîing nght there) certainly suggests the latter, and this is confirmed exactly by Aikibiades' description at

220a4: "Though he drank only when he was forced to do so, he was invincible, and yet, what is most nmarkable of dl, no human being has ever seen Socrates dmnk." Socrates

capacity for drinking is therefore to be rated at least equal to that of the "strongest heads"

Eryximachos' classification is, of course, borne out by the conclusion of the dialogue. Aristodemos manages to report the amount of dnnk to which each of our named participants was exposed (with the exception of Pausanias who goes unmentioned):

There was a gened uproar, ail order was abolished, and &ep drinking k a m e the d e . Aristodemus reported that Eryxmachus and Phaednis and some others went away at this point. He himseif feil asleep....Towards daybreak... he woke up, and fond that the rest of the party had either f d e n asleep or gone away, and that the only people still awake were Agathon and Aristophanes and Socrates.... Anstophanes fell asleep k t , and when it was fuUy light Agathon foiiowed hùn. Then Socrates... got up and went away.

(223bM9)

Since Pausanias was not among those who participated for the duration of the Party, he must have "either failen asleep or gone away," like the other "weak heads." In fact, this proves that Pausanias was not to be included with those whom Eryximachos addressed as "you who have the strongest heads," at 176~2.It is therefore comrnon knowledge within this group that t h e of the members have a signifîcantiy higher capacity for wine-

drinking than ail of the rest, namely Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates. Likewise, it is a given that these three also have ~putationsfor a higher degree of wisdom than the Est:

Aristophanes and Agathon are prize-winning playwrights, while Socrates had already been satirized on stage as a "wise man" (Le., a sophist) eight years befon by none other

than Aristophanes. It is therefore almost certain that Agathon has in mind the notion that one S capacityfor wine drinking is directly proportional to one 's wisdom. When Agathon

says, "We'll settie our respective claims to wisdom a little later on, and Dionysos, the god

of wine, shall judge between us," he means that the wiser of them will outlast the other in a bout of heavy dnnking. Monover, given their respective reptations as cirinkers, he has every nason to think that the contest will eventually corne down to the two of thcm over ail others (as it does) and that Socrates will win (as he does). The only other cornpetitor

who could even possibly give these two a run for their money is Anstophanes

-and he

does so as well, sticking it out aimost until dawn.

Everything about Aristodemos' prologue up to176a4 is therefore preparing us for a drinking contest between Socrates and Agathon, and just such a drinking contest is what

does eventually result fiom Alkiiiades' unpredicted intervention. But because of Pausanias' proposal at 176a5-7, the participants elect early on to suspend heavy drinking

on this occasion, which suggests that Agathon's prediction of a drinkinglwisdom contest will be deniecl, though in fact it is only delayed However, as Aristodemos' and Apo~odonis'narratives impIy,%and as we can weil imagine, there would be little of interest to Socrates' disciples, to philosophers in generd, or to Plato's reading public in the reteiling of the events of a drinking contest alone, regardless of who might have won i t What Apollodorus' fiiends want to hear about and what we want to read about is the speeches on Eros. That is the tnie content and core of this dialogue, but their delivery has

been placed by Plato in the context of what has been described (now, with Agathon's invocation, in emphatic terms) as a dnnking contest. It would seem that, having set us up for a wisdom contest to be adjudicated by means of drinking, Plato must now avert that

drinking temporarily in order that the wisdom at issue might be manifested to his rea&rs in a way more appropriate to his own medium: a written dialogue. In other words, though a drinking contest may be an appropriate measure of wisdom at a readers and Apoilodorus' listeners are not themselves at a

w, Plato's and are not

participating in the dnnking; for S m t e s ' or anyone else's wisdom to be manifest in this dialogue, it must be manifest not in wine but in words. But then, why cast it so strongly

as a drinking contest in the fifit place? We have seen one major reason for Plato's selection of wine as the medium

within which to manifest Dionysos' adjudication of this contest of wisdom: mndsymOPsiPn is a form of the dionysiac in which both of these contestants may

participate equally, and which is not partial to eiüicr of their competing forms of dionysiac discourse. However, thm is more to

than wine-drinking alone. As

The narrators devote about forty-five pages to the speeches, but ody one paragraph to the drinking.

noted above, at the beginning of this essay (210,

possessed their own particular

variety of discourse: especially, erotic praise poetry.r By having Eryximachos propose a series of speeches in praise of -,

Plato replaces one sympotic feature (heavy drinking)

with another that is equaily naturaI for that context, but which effectively transforms

(temporarily) the medium within which the contest of wisdom will take place. It is clear

hom his proposal that Eryximachos has anti-dionysiac intentions. We already know that he has a "weak head" for drink. He next asserts (somewhat cautiously) that "dmnkenness is bad for people" (176d2-3), and when the rest agree to his proposal he goes even further by removing the fl~te-girl~~ and initiating the speechifying. However, it rnight be said that

Eryximachos' selection of a topic for the speeches undermines his own anti-dionysiac

&signs, because sexual desire is just one more element from within the repertoire of means by which Dionysos works his effects upon people. By focusing the night's entertainment on

in order to gratify his beloued,?' Eryximachos demonstrates that

despite his medicai science he is ultimately still subject to the power of this god. His failure to eradicate Dionysos cornpletely gives the god "a fwt in the door," as it were, through which AUcibiades (as Dionysos) will later enter and assume control." '5 Cf. Gentili 89-104. E.g: 'The poetry of Anacmn draws its themes h m the festivities of banquet and symposi-.. The bloom of Bathyiios' youthful beauty. the eyes of Cleoboulos, the blond hair of the Thracian Smerdis, and the gentle disposition of Megistes were recuning themes in the erotic poems dedicated to young men.... The E m s it celebrates...hiad to do with the fomis of iife md coaduct to k encouragecl during the coune of a boy's =tic nlationships. There is a certain symboiîc value to the story that the pet, upon king asked why he composed poems for boys and not hymns to the go&, replieci: 'because it is they who afe my gdds"' (890. The music of the flute is dionysiac, and aids the wine in producing the dionysiac effecu of intoxication. Eryximachos nlatcs how the idea for love-speeches is not his but Phaedms' and says: Y thidc Phaednrs is rïgh~1should therefore iike to gratify him by o f f e ~ him g a contriiution'* (177c4-6). It becornes apparent through AUnbiades' actions and words that it is his erosfir Agathon that brought him here in the h t place (222b-223a).

"

In effect, then, Eryximachos' proposal allows Plato temporady to substitute speech-making for wine-ciriaking -to substimte worhfor whe. Moreover, this evening's fare is no mere erotic praise poeûy: it is speech in praise of the god Ems himseK which means that these speeches will themselves constitute yet another type of

dionysiac nligious discourse, in this case a type suited to the context of the W. But since dionysiac nligious discourse is precisely the realm of expertise within which Somates and Agathon are competing for the designation of most wise, the speeches

become an ideal medium within which to carry on that very contest." The speeches are,

for al1 intents and purposes, equivalent to the medium of wine. This equivalency has k e n estabfished in a number of ways. Fht, there is the actual physical replacement of one by the other: where heavy drinking is supposed to be, it has been excluded and replaced with

speechifying;and when heavy wine-dnnking resumes, the speechimng comes to an end. Second, the or&r of the speeches corresponds to the order in which the participants bow

out of the drinking, with Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates, respectively, coming last." Third, the speeches in praise of E

m are, like wine,a third dionysiac medium, distinct

from both dramatic poetry and Socrates' philosophical talk and hence unbiased? Fourth,

"

Tbat the participants themselves view the s p e e c m g as a type of coatest is confirmai by Socrates own words (at 194a1-4,198b-d,199bl-2). This also is to k expected as a normal feature of sympotic practice: 'Thus the logos ~ynipotikos,at a certain point in the gatheting, cornes to assume the d e of a contest, a demonsttation wbich each m e m k is expected to make of his abüity and his tecMcPI and executive capacities" (Pellizer 179). 30 ALkiiades is in every way an exception to these smicairer. He is technically not part of either contest, as he eIects to praise Socrates rather than and he is already quite dnink when he arrives; his role as judge wouid preclude thai possibilty in any case. Also, no mention is made of what happens to himat the end of the Party.

a

31

reqaisite neutrality of ihis form of discoune explains a great deal. F i and foremost, it tells us what the speeches are nor: they are not examples of tragedy or comedy, nor are they examples of "philosophicaltaik."They are a form distinct h m all of these, so that no matter how much any speaker might import to his speezh from his own profession (e.g., AriStophanes and iaughter at 189b6-7;Socnites and elnichas.with Diotima; etc.). none of these speeches is a product of those PM~~SS~OIS. Aristophams is not defiering comedy h m , nor is Agathon

Aikibiades, the d m k e n judge of the contest of wisdom (which Agathon had emphatically

identifïed as a drinking contest), awards his crowns on the bais of their respective abilities with wordr. And finaily there is Socrates' curious ability to drink vast quantities

of wine without getting dmnk; this last point requires a more detailed accounting. As Thomas Godd was perhaps the first to point out

aAn~ient230-231), and

as Anderson agrees (1 1,103-lW), Socrates' unique capacity for wine-drinking is open to two opposite interpretations: either Socrates is immune to wine because he is immune to the power of Dionysos (and hence is a "creahire of Apollo," in Anderson's words), or he

is immune to it because he is always already possessed by Dionysos (and hence is a "creahue of Dionysos"), so that no amount of wine can make him more dmnk than he

always already is. Anderson opts for the iatter interpretation on the grounds that Wabiades, as Dionysos, describes Socrates as a satyr and as Marsyas -the dninken cornpanions of Dionysos -so this attribution of wine-imrnunity which is borne out in fact becomes "a case of the god claiming his own" (1û4). Anderson is nght hem, in a

sense; but there must be more to it than that, as Gould had argued before him. An obvious objection to Anderson's argument is that Socrates sirnply does not act a s if he were drunk

-he does not stagger when he walks, saimmer and slur his spech, behave wildly, for delivering tragedy nor Socrates philosophy. These are praise-speeches spoken at a the entertainment of an audience of fnnids not a pubüc theatrical event and not an intimate conversation. This gives the lie to aU of the diverse and complex attempts in the üterature to define these speeches in pncisely the tams of Attic drama, usualiy in order to resolve fhe end-ricidie. We should expezt confision of the issue to k the naairal result of those attempts (as Sider perhaps illustrates best of a& cf.above, 81). Agathon might have been invited to mite a speech h m his winning tragedy, but he is not; Socrates might bave b e n dowed to engage in philosophicai taik, but he is not. Rather, each i s cornpelleci to adopt a cornmon form that effixtively pua him out of his own elemenî, and if is on& becme of ùuit that they c m be measured a g a d euch other. We may weil expect that aspects of their profèssioas is what will explain success and failure for the participants in this speakîng-competiiioo, but that is not the same thing as assnmingî h t their respective pr0feSSion.sare king exemplified in the speeches that they give.

-

sluggishly or inapppriately, and so on. By contriut, Alkibiades. who is dnmk and wh6 is (ex hypothesi) possessed by the god, does also obviousIy uppear to be drunk. So what sense does it make to Say that Socrates is always dru& in this same way? The substitution, or equivalency, that Plato has set up between dionysiac words and dionysiac wine makes it possible to conceive of Socrates as being, in a sense, perpetually "dr~nk."~'

We have already discussed Alkibiades' description of Socrates as Iike a satyr-figurine that

opens up to nveai images of the gods: Somites has gods inside of him, and those gods are also in his words -his philosophical tak (1389. Alkibiades in effect clairns that Socrates is perpetually in a state of "enthousiasmas" (of having god within km).But

enthousiasmasis none other than the state which differentiates between mere drunkenness, and genuine possession by Dionysos? By means of the divine words that

fiil up, and emanate from, his person, then, Socrates is possessed by Dionysos in a way that is for al1 intents and purposes equivalent to possession by wine, but without the wine.

He is b'word-dnink," possessed by dionysiac discourse. And because he is always already

genuinely

(withwords), wine has no eff't upon him. F i t Eryximachos and then

Alkibiades stresses Socnites' uniqueness in this regard: he is so indifferent to dnnking

that he need not even be consulted on the question of whether to dnnk or not; and no

human king has ever seen him dnmk. This immunity to wine is so singular because it is part of Socfates' other, more primary, singularity which is revealed in Alkibiades' speech: he bas climbed up to a higher level of existence than that occupied by the men around

a Gouid does not nddnss this equivaience?but treats it ail as purely metaphoncal (230231).

R d &O the analogy of Socrates and Marsyas, whereby the '*philosophicaltaik" of Socrates is SimüarIy identifid with raptmus nate music (the v a y son of music that was banished, almg with wine, by Eryxhachos).

him -a level that is closer to g d Wine, therefore, cannot exert its usual effect on Socrates and bnng him into contact with goci, as it can for other men; on the contrary, it is Socrates' words that act iike wine in possessing the souls of others, bringing them even if only for the duration of a conversation -up to his Ievel.

This substitution of words for wine by Eryximachos, followed by the resubstitution of wine for words by Aikibiades, means that the contest between Agathon and Socrates is played out twice, once in each medium, with,apparently, identicai results.

Aikibiades' crowning of both Agathon and Socnites as "victorious with words," but with Socrates more so, corresponds to their ais0 king the two men who outdnnk al1 of the others, with Socrates finally outdrinking Agathon as well. However, we have seen already how this is a contest of more than just the respective degrees of wisdom of these two men: by thtir contrast they symbolize the opposition between the public religious discourse of Delphic/Homeric religion (Agathon), and the private religious discourse of orphiclbacchic mystery-religion sar rate^).^ When Plato has Dionysos give Socnites the victory here, he cannot but be pnoritizing these two discourses: the orphidbacchic mystery-religion of Socrates' philosophical talk LF bener, and to no small degrce. The absolute terms in which Socrates' victory is described (complete irnmunity to wine; a

godlike core beneath his unappealing exterior; "not just thc other &y, iike Agathon, but ulways") make that victory so complete that the god is, in effect, saying, "No contest!"

"

Again, let me stress here as in the previous chapter that 1do not mean to descni mystety cuits pcr se as a separate religion; Burkert has demonstratedthat mysienes were just an experimental cult-option that developed n a W y out of the votive character of DelphicMomenc religion itself. Thne is, therefore, no Greek "mystery reIigion," per se. However, in combination wîth Orphism, the bacchidpythagorean mystery cults absorkd a religious impulse foreign and opposed to the Delphic/Homexic, making it appropriate and even necessary in tbis case to speak of a distinct religious discome in these mysteries-

Yet this does not mean that Plato intends Socrates' religious discourst to supplmt Agathon's, or even that Plato believes it ought to supplant Agathon's, the way so many interpreters of this dialogue have concluded fiom Socrates' victory. That would be a fallacy based on the false premise that Agathon and Socrates are engaged in the same activity, which they are not. We saw in the pnvious chapter how Socrates' discourse was

necessarily a discourse of the few: it is quite simply beyond the reach of most people (Diotima even wondered whether it was beyond the nach of Socrates). To Say that Plato intends Socrates' talk (or philosophy) to become the single new religious discoune for everyone would be tantamount to depriving most people of religion altogether, or even inciting them to atheism. If the many (oi nobAo\) are to have religion at al1 then it must be in terms that they cm understand and to which they can relate

-Le., not philosophy.

There must therefore aiways be these two religious discourses in the g&, one for the many and one for the few (the philosophers). Plato has shown us the crowning of both Agathon and Socrates, with priority going to S m t e s ; yet both remain crowned, and both

an "wisei' than al1 othen. Agathon has earned his "crown-of-the-many" in the theatre; Socrates his "crown-of-the-few" in conversation with those he loves, such as .Wbiades. Plato thereby establishes the validity and the necessity of both types of discourse, but problematizes the relariomhip between them.

This resuit of our analysîs (that the chief significance of the contest between Agathon and Socrates lies in the prioritizîng of philosophy over tragedy qua foms of religious cult and discourse, albeit with both remaining equally necessary) is given more substance through Pausanias' articulationof a precisely similar distinction of cults in his speech on Ems. In contrast to Phaednis, who spoke of Eros as if he were singular,

Pausanias says there are two Erotes, one comsponding to each of the two ~phrodites:~' Now what are the two Aphrodites? One is the elder and is the daughter of Uranus and had no mothw, her we c d Heavenly [06pav
The very terminology that Pausanias uses is strikingly suggestive of the contrat between Agathon and Socrates. Plato would appear to be drawing upon actual epithets of

Aphrodite from Athenian cults, which is to Say that dedications to the goddess Aphrodite

using those epithets have k e n observed -on the ground in Athens

-in later centuries.

The precise significance of the historical epithets has been Iost, though obviously referred to Aphrodite in her capacity as daughter of Ouranos. But in any case, in transfemng the epithets h m Aphrodite to Eros by association, Pausanias clearly is

appealing more to the most obvious sense of the ternis than to any specific cultic definition, for he denves the respective features of his two Erotes ftom those obvious senses. For instance, Pausanias says, "There can be no doubt of the common nature [aAqO& naiv6qpo'~ éon] of the Love that goes with Common Pav8@ou] Aphrodite"

(181a7-bl), and this is the god who animates the "lesser" sort of men.Here, Pausanias takes in its derogatory sense a word which need not Iiterally be derogatoryM"pandemos," of course, iiterallyjust means of, or for, "aü of the people." Likewise, he attributes to the -

Eros the fea-s

of a mature male lover because that Eros is

-

*

'

Pausanias refus to the two distinct myths of the biith o f Aphmdite as if they described distinct desses. As with ''y&&' in Latîn, which means "of the general public" but gives rise to ''vuiRtl$ar>'with its strongiy negative comotations, so too both '&mg$' and *'bandemosn in Greek.

the cornpanion of the elder ~phrodite? But it is dso these most obvious meanings of the two epithets tbat puts them so clearly into relation with the Socrates-Agathon contrast.

Agathon's is a publiccult discourse addressed to the entire ppliS, including Socrates, and Somtes makes this very explicit: "We were in the theatre, you know, and part of the audience of ordinary people [rhv noAA6vI" (194~4-5).Hence, Agathon's cult and discourse is literaily "pandemic," in that it is inhekntly pblic and-dl-inclusiveof the

citizenry. On the other hanci, according to Pausanias, the

Eros is that which

animates the gwd lovers (ayu0oi); it is clearly the better of the two Erotes. And though in the case of Aphrodite, the name "-'

naturally implies "bom from Ouranos,"

the word more generally means "heavenly," since "

was also"the Greek word for

~

the sky and the heavens. Pausanias is therefore using the epithet ''= primarily as

a positive value-terni: as an epithet applied both to the god Eros and to the love he inspires in men,the word connotes something more like "üans-human,"or "close to god." It is in that sense that it most clearly corresponds to Somtes' variety of religious

cult and discourse. Finally, Pausanias' caveat that "we ought to praise al1 the gods" afflrms that both of these cults are legitimate and demand recognition and praise -even the worse of the two which, according to Pausanias, is responsible for less-than-virtuous

behaviour. We have perhaps now said as much as can be said about the contest between

Agathon and Socrates in strictiy religious terms, but if so then still it is quite a lot. Plato

has actually provided his reader with a great ded of information in this regard. If this has

not been adequately appreciated in the lïterature before now then it is almost certainly on -

- -

"Being the daughter of Onranos, this Aphrodite (Hesiod) is a generation older 16an Zeus, whiIe the other account (Homet) would make Pandemic Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus.

account of the unwillingness of most interpreters to take PIato's association of Socrates with the dionysiac at face value. Once we have made the connection between Socrates'

philosophical talk and bacchic mystery-cult initiation. the cult-contrast with Agathon

emerges naturally out of their contest of wisdom and is then reiterated in several different aspects of the text, as we have shown. Socrates' victory in this contest of "wisdom" then canies with it the apparent implication that his heterodox account of divinity is true, while the Homeric/Delphic myths that he fin& so unpalatable arefa~se? The p i c m that

this paints is the picture of a proMem, specifically, the problem that Plato must then overcome by means of the doctrine of eros that finally emerges from the series of

speeches. It is the problem of the CO-existenceof two distinct religious discourses within one and the same community. One discourse is exotenc and public, and extends to all citizens who al2 partake of it; the other is esotenc and pnvate, and extends only to those few citizens who are capable of meeting its very high demands, and who also participate simultaneously in the public discourse. In what sense can two such cults be compatible?

In what sense can there be peace between them?How can it be possible for one person to be committed simultaneously to what are, essentially, n ~ distinct o religions? These are ways of phrasing the problem that Plato has set himself the task of addressing in the

.-

It is the problem of Socrates' life

-of his guilt or innocence on the charges

for which he was condemned And, ultimately, it is the problem of whether philosophy -

Socrates' incompatibe hetedoxy is displayed clearly in Euthyphro: "Indeed, Euthyphro. this W the reason why 1 am a defendant in the case. because I G d it harâ to accept thmgs iike tbat king said about the go&, and it is lkely to be the reason why 1SM k told I do wrong" (6a5-8). Just such an opposition is. of course, &O the d t of Gould's analysis of Plato's Dionysos into 'hnro" gods, one mie and one false (above, Chapter One ib.10). But what Gould overIwks is precîsely the political probiem that this opposition gives rise to, as if 6is so-cded %ad" Ems were simply disposabIe.

can ever W y be integrated within society, or whether it is doorned to be forever at odds with it. It is this embedding of the bbAgathon/Somites-c~n~tT' within Pausanias' speech that will allow Plato to approach the problem by means of the doctrine of eros, because Pausanias' distinction of the two Erotes will be taken up and developed in tun by

Eryximachos and Anstophanes in very different terms. Pausanias is therefore the chief point of contact between the dionysiac context of the speeches on Eros and the actual content of those speeches themselves. Accordingly, the continuing development of this

contrast (Pausanias' dual Eros) by the later speakers can be translated back into the original tems of the contrasting dionysiac religious discounes of tragedy and philosophy.

In the foilowing chapter. we shall begin to show how such a translation might be done, and what it has to tell us.

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- Chapter Four &mp~& and ~ M.The Problem Pushed to a Crisis

We have seen how the depiction of somatic philosophy as a mystery cult (Ch2)

and the contest by which it is so expiicitly contrasted with tragedy (Ch3) both draw attention to the potential for political and religious confiict between philosophy and the

*.

But something that has never been adequately appreciated is the extent to which

Plato's choice of a

for the context of this dialogue acnially aggravates that

opposition. In Athens in the classical period the

had become an

institutionalized form of resistance to the democracy -largely symbolic, but in some cases real.' In this regard, one could Say that it served a political function exactly opposite

to that of tragedy and the pplis- festival^:^ whereas those institutions posited an ideology of unity and integration (and the equality of ail citizens as citizens) against the tradinonal

preeninence of the aristocrars, the

was a predominantly aristocratie forum

within which to maintain the aristoctatic sense of superionty and difference against the This does not contraâict the aforementioaed neutnüty of the vis-à-vis hagedy and mysteries, because that issue concemecl the impartiality of the god, and in tragedy and mysteries the cuit itseif was necessariiy eitheraIi-mclusive or exclusive. respectively.Though most in fact SM with the dionysiac its exclusion of the many, that exclusion was an and not inherent in its dionysiac character. 'The many" couid accidental feantre of the just as legitimately as "the few," but generally they did and did hold theu own dionysiac so to a much lesser degree, and in imitation of the nch. There are even cases of pubüc buildings simultaneoasly as part of publicly fhded cult designecl to accommodate many srnail events, The wodd also have been much less prominent (or nonexistent) in demotic as a i e d t of the poorer citizeus' inabüity to handle the cousequemes of nibseqnmt iitigation. See Meier, as discussed above. 167f.

prevaiing dmocmticpolitics of the age.3In Oswyn Murray's words,

The fundamental potential for opposition between drinking group and democracy is clear. However much the fifth-century demaracy might try to provide pubüc ctining-rooms and public occasions for feasting, the symposion remained IargeIy a private and aristocratie preserve; but the social attitudes which it existed to promote requiredpublic display. This was provided by the komos, the ritual drunken not at the end of the synzposion, performed in public with the intention of dernonstrating the power and lawlesmess of the dnnking group. (Murray. 'The Affaii' 14%)

The

of fifih-cenniry Athens were thus home to "drinking-groups" with

predominantly aristocratie memberships. These groups were bent on violating both the etiquette and the laws of the city, be it just for fun, for political results, or to mate a bond

of dminality (a pisfiS), and it was out of these dnnking-groups that the farnous "poiitical clubs" (or hetainiai)of fifth-century Athens amse.' Consequently, "to the fifth-century

Athenian [theatre] audience, the symposion is an alien world of licence and misbehaviour,

far removed h m the decorous religious or philosophical group envisaged by

Murray (''Sympotic History" 7): 'The symposion became in many respects a place apart h m the normal d e s of society, with its own strict code of honour in the pistis there created, and its own willhgness to estabtish conventions fundameutally opposed to those within the polis as a whole." Following the ltad of Brno Gentili and othen (rnainiy in Italy) who have been investigating the oral context of Greek lysic poetry since the late ninetan-sixties, a considerable number of scholars have in recent years begun to thmw new light on the nature and the signEcance of the as an important and multi-faceted social phenornenon. Perhaps fonmost amongst these is Oswyn Murray,editor of an excellent collection of ment essays 0. Though most of this r a m t work has Little h c t i y to do with Plato's some of it cm be brought to bear very fniimilly on our hterpretation of the dialogue: 'Despite the enonnous significance of Plato's S'posiwn within the classicai tradition, the tradition itself betrays k t e d understanding of Greek sympotic customs" (Murray, "Sympotic History" 8). We have alnady had several occasions to refa to M m y and his contriOutors, and shall continue to do so in what foiiowsSympotic activities were instrumental in fosterîng the communal identities of the rnatched betairripi, the irnporîance of this facîorcan be seen in that the typical size of the the d g capacity of îhe standard Greek dining room, o r e . '%rithtwo to a couch, an d r o n wiiI normaiiy hold ktwan fourken and ihirty persons. Any larger numba of couches tends to isolate the members of the symposion fhm each other, and to maLe impossible the communal activities characteristic of it. The size of the group and of the space within which it operaied had an important effect on the nature of the p u p loyaities and the formation of the hgt&&' (Mumy, "Sympotic-tory'' 7; P e k , 180, linLsthis to the normativïty of sympotic Bergquist covers the anhaeological evidcnce).

m,

Xenophanes" (Murray,"The Mair"150). If, however, we wish to employ the historical insight of Murray and othea inio

Athenian sympotic traditions as a basis from which to investigate Plato's &Q&UI,

an

objection witl ahost certainly be raised at the outset, namely, that Plato, unIike our twentieth-century scientific investigators of the

w, has an ethical program and

prescriptive purposes behind his writing. As a result, when Plato writes of

m,in

or eisewhere, it is precisely Xenophanes' "decorous" type of event that he

the

that may have been standard

does have in mind and not this raucous mode1 of

practice in the Athens of his own &y. If so, then we should hesitate before attributing to Plato's discussion or portraya1 of

any implication of these sorts of political

connotations. It is, of course, well known that in the objectionable features of the standard

itself Plato mitigates the

and replaces them with a more

eniightened, intellechial fan.This agrees with what he has Socrates Say in other dialogues.' In the ,

for instance, Socrates actually refers directly to the

dnnking-parties of the scrambling of political cliques with flute-girls

while reviewing the features of the philosopher: 'The

for office; social functions, dinners, parties

-such doings never enter his head even in a ciream (173d)!

Taken

together with many other passages scattered ihrough the dialogues where Socrates alludes

347~-348aTecugan writes: "Onemay be surprisecl at finding how Cf esp. constantiy Piaio refened to the symposion thughout his writings, endeavouring to make judgemenîs on or even to corne to iums with it... The impact of the symposion on Plato's thought b one more proof of the important part which this institution played m the Greek worid" (238). It is noteworthy that atjust tbis point in the , while reviewhg the characteristicsof philosophers as such, Thedorus maices the foiiowing conmt: "ûur arguments are our own....We have no jury, and no audience (as the ciramatic poeis have), Sitting in control over us. ready to criticize and give orders" (173~).Both junes and audiences r e p e n t the power of the

-.

to drinking parties, sometimes in more positive te=, alternative account of a "philosophical -,"

this betrays an underlying, and may with some confidence be

put down as Plato's own conception of what a drinking party ought to be? We ought,

more as an idealized projection by Plato back ont0 this event

then, to take the

many years before of a fom that would have rendered it amenable to Socrates' participation, than as simply a reiteration of the normal (but thoroughly unsocratic) that would actually have been ükelier. And, acc&dingly, we should expect very linle historical reality in Plato's portrayal, so that ment sociological or anthropological

analyses of the histoncal institution of the Gnek

(such as Murray's) would be

of littie devance. In other words, since Socrates says (in the )philosopher would not even ciream of attending the

that the

of m, or of getting

involved with the things that concem them, but then participates willingly in Agathon 's, is an idealized depiction suited to Plato's

we should infer that the

philosophicai purposes, and that it will therefore exclude any and al1 refiection of the political machinations of the

m.For that reason, we must eschew concrete

historical examples in our interpretation of the

and concentrate instead on the

text itself, within which Plato has constnicted his f a n t a s y - w according to his

prescribed sympotic reforms.

This objection rnight aU be well and good8were it not for the fact that Plato

'

For an investigationof Plaîo's treatment of the ouiside of the svrnwsium, see Tecqan, who argues for a developmentai thesis moving k m lofty ideais of intelleauai in hû early works, to a resigned acceptance of the usefulnessof irrationaiism in the bbconstitution

for-

ofLgyySI&IL

* Might a i l be well and good, but iikely ïs not Just because Plato has restrictedtbe

drinking and the physical activities and sîrengthened the inteliechml element, that gives us no nason to mfcr that he intends to reject the W e r fiinctioa and signif7cance of the institution. To understand Plato's sympotic refonns we need to how what the mformed was all

himself has unequivocally imported the concerns and activities of the

and their

by giving Alkibiades a major role in very

dnnking parties directly into the

close historicd proximity to the infamous "flair of the rnystene~."~ This is not to Say that Plato intended to portray Agathon's party as an example of the typical

w, so that

we should be on the look-out for political plots and machinations amongst these very

participants and their speeches, nor even that these friends of Agathon's constitute a

repuiar "drinking group." Rather, this particular W. while more ''XenophanicW than most on account of Eryximachos' proposais (and hence more compatible with Plato's own ideais), is nonetheless put into direct r r l a t i ~ nw 'i ~th those other Athenian that we h o w to have been occurring at about the same time

Akibiades as a prominent participant

-also with

-which were very shortly both to min Aikibiades'

about, and that is what these new stuclies intend to @fi. P e W r writes: 'Tt seems to me worth rememkring tbat the first philosopher to attempt to give an organic definition of the symposion was not unaware of the distinctive qualities and the ambiguities -which are peculiar to i and which define it precisely in relation to the reaim of the passions....[O]ne could formulate in G m k texmhology a syntbesis and definition of the symposion, which would be very close to the long discussion which Plato devotes to it in... the Lmvs: it is @ipparov @opou,and pAéq jbov fjç....m bis type of exercise...WUbe able to be mon satisfactorily understood within the perspectiveof a semiotic study of the passions in aocient Greece" (183). In other words, Plato's is not much different h m that of modem scholan, understanding of th fuoction of the are even cast in terms of that very functionality. It is mistaken, then, to and his reforms in the '%am scratch" such that we can just assume that Plato is inventhg his philosophical ignore traditional forms and look entirely to the pages of Plato's dialogues to uuderstand hU sympotic ideaIs. puts this Piato's choice of Agathon's nrJt victory for the dramatic date of the dialogue's main events either five or seventeen months prior to the desecration of the h e m . The Atheniau calendar year 416/15BCEmetches h m Iuly 416 to June 415; thus the ciramatic date of the Agathon's victory placed in January of "416" by Athenaeus 217b. would appear to k just five months *or to the expedition andjust days or weelu pnor to the appointment of 1Ukiiiades as generd (Febniary 415). Dover' however, ~ f e tno this reconstruction as "a persistent enor in modeni discussions of [the svrnwsiuml that has o b s c d that interval" (EIB1P 9nl). Instead, Dover would place ~gauiofl'svictory at the Lenaia of 4Wl6,and hence "[Aikiiiades'] appointment as one of the generais of the Sicüian Expedition Iies over a year ahead" (9111)For . datuig of the events of 415 themselves see Mad)oweii 181489. Io KnoWmg of the proximity of these events, the reader will natudy be on the look out for any indication by Plato of Allaiiades' infamous profiillations, even at this W.

-

political career and bring Athens to the brink of civil war. The events of the summer of 415 BC [Le., the &air of the mysteries] in Athens affecteci the lives of many individuals for the next twenty years; and, in the larger political view, they cm be held to have k e n ultimately responsible for the f d of the Athenian empire, in that they opened up a fatal bnach of misîrust in Athenian political life, between the dems and its traditional aristocratie leaders. This revelation of the potential existence of a me class stniggle in Athens Ied directly to the defensive oügarchic leaction of 4 11 BC. (Murray, "The Affair" 149) Where, after dl. is Alkibiades comingfrom when he arrives at Agathon's party if not one

of those un-socratic and un-philosophical

-perhaps even one of the very

at which he profaned the Eleusinian rnystenes? By his previous participation in

on the same evening, he effectively imports an image

the more typical kind of

of that other kind of party into Agathon's, and thereby establishes the contrast between

hem; by then making hirnself the

.-

he even goes on to transfm Agathon's

party into something more like the typical kind." In mding this dialogue, therefore, we need to remember that unlike dl of ihose other places where Plato also discusses

outside of the ,-

this dialogue portrays a putatively historical event

involving well-hown personages at a notorîous juncnire in Athenian history. This makes a special case and gives it a context in which the features of historical

the

fom an alrnost palpable backdrop. The so-calied "affair of the mystenes" foilowed closely upon the notonous

mutilation of the herms in the days leading up to the departure of the Athenian force to

" Xt is perhaps most notewonhy that Plat03 ideaiized conception of the philosophicai

gives no role to the kpmpp,the one aspect of the typical svmwQion that set it most violentiy agaînst the peace of the community.Appropnately, Agathon's SVmWSi0n does not end in a either, but carries nght on through to dayIight. It was, however, by means of a that Alkilbiades anivecl there h m his earlier party.

a

Sicily in 415 se. In a single night, almost ali of the herms12in Athens were defaced, a

tremendous act of sacrilege that was initially thought to have required as many as three hundred participants. According to Thucydides, the matter of the h e m was, 'thought to

be ominous for the expedition, and part of a conspiracy to bring about a revolution and to upset the democracy" (VI, 27). The resultant draconian measures taken by the state failed to rwt out any conspiracy, however, and though testimony was indeed heard that implicated a number of

in a unified action aimed at destabilizing the

govement. the official story finally accepted by the board of inquiry was that the entire mutilation was just the nsult of excessive enthusiasm on the part of a single drinking

group of twenty-two men, in a

a. NI members of that drinking group were subject

to death or exile for the crime (except Andokides, who was granted ùMiunity in retum for testimony). Certainty in this matter has eluded modern investigators as much as it did the ancients, but more important for our study is that the mutilations led to the creation of

"what became in effect an official commission of inquiry into the activities of sympotic groups" (Murray, ''The Aff&" Mg), with the result that the investigation was extended to address other sacrilegious acts that might be related to these in any way. It was in this

extended capacity that the board heard testimony to the effect that the Eleusinian mystenes had been profaned at a number of different

held in a number of

different hou~eholds.'~

'*Herms are stylized statues of Hennes used (among other things) to mark property boundanes. 13Evidence has survived of five separate lists of participants (Le., of five distinct gmups of profaners) with no overlap berneen gmups but for the foilowing: Alki'biades occm on thm of the lis& as a participant, Poulytion on one Lict as a participant and another as housebolder (Muray,The Affair" 153-155; three of the Lisu are disclosed by Andokides 13,35-37;15,21024; 35,22026. Mad)oweii M y discusses the events). The evidence suggests that the= may have been othex Iists of nidicmimts in addition to these that have d v e d , and that even amongst these five

AMbiades was accused of participating in both the mutilation of the herms and the profanation of the mysteries. but while he was quickly exonerated of the former, the

latter charge stuck and proved to be his undoing. The crime was punishable by death or exile; added to those penalties was a stem curse from the priesthood at Eleusis. That the charges were politically motivated is taken for granted by Thucydides, and scholars tend to agree, but stili there seems to be littie doubt about Alkibiades' guilt. Nonetheless. in the shift h

m the mutilation of the herms to the affair of the mysteries the threat of an

anti-democratic conspiracy was lost. That threat is what had driven the investigation to uncover the existence of the profanations in the first place. Once discovered, the

profanations were prosecutcd as serious offences in their own right, but in ail likelihood they wcre not motivated by desias against the constitution. Murray rejects the thesis

forwarded by Dover and others that these sacrilegious acts were done in the spirit of humour, as a type of sympotic entertainment. Rather, he traces the sacxilege to the underlying social function of the

itself, a thesis that has many lesser exarnples

in its favour (The Affair" 157); this particular act of profanation would then be an extrernely daring example of a general sympotic pattern. Unüke the sympotic kQmPi(and the smashing of the herms) which were public displays intended to send a political

message, these private acts of sadege were a type of bravado interna1 to the

itself, by which means the participants could self-indulgently flaunt the extremity of their

groups there may have been many repeated instances of the crime. One of the events was said to have been held m Akibiades' house. Of the sixty-eightprofaners whose names have corne down to us. only four of them were among those condemned for the mutiIations. which suggests that the N O affiairs were m fact not relaied. Wheîher or not the testirnonies of the informers can be . considered trustwoahy, "it was clearly believed...that the Mysteries had been profaned on a number of Merent occasions, in what were evidently sympotic situations" (Murray, 'The Affaii' 15s).

disregard for social n o m : [SJuchacts are not done for a political purpose; they are done in Thucydides' words, 64' uppe~,through contempt for the gods and for the ordinary conventions of society; they demonstrate 'an undemocratic contempt for the laws', an OZ bqpon~finapavopia (Thuc.6.28.2). Yet they were never intended to become public knowledge. ("The Affair" 158)

Murray sees important parallels with aristocratie clubs in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury England, that flaunted their atheism and even dabbled in Satanism in a stnkingly

similar fashion. Such sacrilege as this, he says, '%an exist oniy in a society which believes

in God, and within a group which is not entùely sure that it does not believe. It is a defiant gesture directed towards God as much as man,daring Him to punish and half expecting Hirn to do so" (158). Ultimately. whatever motivated the profanations is less

important than what the whole &air reveals about the relationship of the sympotic groups to the

aof which they were ostensibly a part. The people of Athens suspected these

groups of being hostile to the state, and the

of king the locus of an active

resistance to the demucratic constitution. To destroy Allcibiades, his political opponents needed do no more than implicate him in the sacrilegious activities of these groups. Having failed to do that in the openly threatening case of the hem,'*they were able to ride the crest of public paranoia and employ extraordinary legal mesures to mot out

something else offensive of which he (apparently) redy was guilty.

The effects, however, were more fat-reaching than merely to displace a single poiitical leader. If, as Murray has argued, "This revelation of the potential existence of a mie class struggle in Athens led directly to the defensive oligarchie reaction of 411 ec," -

'*~hue is, of course. a possibilty that the mutiiation of the henns was perpetratedby Alki'biades' political opponents precisely in order that he be accused of responsibility. hplicit here is the demotic fear that Auobiades intended COseize power in Athens while m cornmand of the expeditionary forces and set himself up as a tyrant.

then it may weil have been this political manipulation of the public distrust of the drinking groups that initially f'ractured the political unity of the Athenian ppliS and prepared the way for increasingly violent civil strife, and eventually, outright civil wad5

In such a historical context as this, no

can be without political significance,

because even ifd that the participants themselves had in mind was to get together with frieads for a hannless,' delightful celebration (as at Agathon's), still that celebration was private. Beyond the closed doors of the

was an ever more feamil and watchful

public that was suspicious of the possible intrigue and hostile designs at work within. And, of course, few

really were just harmless, delightful celebrations like

Agathon's. By choosing for the setting of his dialogue a

celebrated during this

temse period of crisis in recent Athenian history, Plato brings the historical disintegration .

of the Athenian pplig into the ambit of the dialogue's problematic; by inserting Alkibiades as a character, he then draws that issue into the foreground. Once again, then, Plato places before his readers a clash between two opposed sub-groupings of the PQLiS, one of them "the few" (in this case the aristpi, or the nobility) and the other "the many" (in this case the

a, or the poor), and impiicitly raises the question of how it is

possible for such oppositions to coexist within the pPlis. Alternatively, we might say that Plato is asking whether a city that contains such divisions as this c m ever constitute a genuine political community. Plato's use of the

thus reiterates the same sort of conflict that we saw

emerging between Socrates and Agathon, but now in exclusively political r e m and with In this regad, it is worth nohg that the oiigarchy of 411 BC, wîth its infamous "death sqaads," was organized precisely by a coilaboration(svnamosial of-as was f d to be the case in 415; though as M m y saggests, this may as n e t y have been a proâuct of the prosecutions of 415, as their vindication.

a different constituency: in both cases (syrnpotic

m,and dionysiac thiaspg)we are

presented with a small subset of the citizenry forming itself into a private union with

interests potentialiy incompatible with those of the polis,16 thereby effectively challenging the authority and the integrity of the ppliS itself. While the

connotes

and inwduces the conflict between rich and poor, Plato's metaphoncal description of philosophy as a c u l t ~Though . ~ ~ neither

presents the religious confiict between ecstatic and pragmatic nor

was necessarily hostile to the pPlis, the

potential for hostility was then, and was keenly felt by the public. Plato was well schooled in the political intransigence of both conflicts. For the former, he had his own experience of the Peloponnesian War, which had revealed the fiagiüty of the "social contract" between nch and poor in the Greek cities;18for the latter, he had the example of

the Pythagoreans. By posing the same problem repeatedly, not only as political and religioics, but also as discursive (via the contest between Agathon's poetry and Socrates'

philosophical talk), Plato would appear to be problematizing the very possibility of a With regard to the W.Murray ~ r i t e of s Andokides' testimony: TertainLy the and the means of cementing them are well atteste& hportance of the ties of loyalty in the not least in the manner in which Andalcides had to defend himseif at fength against the accusation that he had ktmyed his hetairpi; he taiks of 'the most temale misfortune of ail' (1.51), the choice on the one h d , and, on the other, his famiiy and his city" ('The Affaii' 153, between his Muüay's emphasis). Likewise, it is now weil know how the autonomy of the dionysiac 298). and that the made it ''autitheticai in various rrspecu to the ppiis" (Seaford, appropriation of dionysiac religion by the g& essentiaiiy consisted in the means of co-opting that autonomy. As Burkea writes, with regard to the ultimate failure of Pythagoreanism: 'It was evidently the ovmidiag power of the polis with its thomugh military and politicai organization that did not tolerate sects but upheld the c l a h to furnish the pRmary reference system for any 'we/they' dichotomy"("Craft" 22). By "ecstatic"1mean to mdicate the doctrine of human participation in the divine (a feanut sband by the dionysiac mystay cdis, orphic or otherwise); by "pragmatic," 1mean the mutuai exclusiveness of human and divine that h typical of HomeridDelphic religion. fiom the I8 Consider esp. Socrates* following description of the Greek Tach of ihem is a geat many cities, nota city, as they say in the game. At any rate, each of them consists of two cities at war with one another, that of the poor and that of the nch, and each of these contains a great many" (422e-42%). l6

"

genuine political community that contains sub-groupingswith radicaily distinct interests, abilities or commitments. But by the very nature of Plato's compIex presentation in the ,-

these

three logically distinct versions of the problem are not left entirely separate but are

poetically superimposed. We have seen (Ch2)how Plato has metaphoncaily identified Socrates' philosophical talk with the nligious experience of dionysiac possession, thereby also identimng the dionysiac '"few" of the

with the intellectual "few"

who are both capable of, and drawn towards, dialectical inquiry. This suggests a type of defined by philosophical ability and inclination. Alkibiades' "secret" address to his fellow "snake-bite" victims then cornes very close to identifying the membenhip of bat particular philosophical fhiaspswith the participants at Agathon's svmwçion:

Seeing too that your compmy consists of people like Phaedms, Agathon, Eryximachus, Pausanias, Aristodemus, as well as Anstophanes, not to mention Socrates hirnself, people who have al1had your share in the madness and bnyof philosophy -well, you s h d hear what happened....As for the servants and any other vuigar and uninitiated persons who may be present, they must shut their ears tight against what 1am going to Say. (218a7-218b7)

Though some non-philosophers are indeed present, they are certainly not prominent participants and Alkibiades even lumps them together with the slaves.19This effectively locates the philosophical the impression of a

here within the bounds of this drinking party, creating that is at the same time coextensive with a sacrîlegious

m.20 This impression is ieinforced by the presence of othcrs who participated in the l9 It is this off-hand refetence to the slaves thaî makes the dusion to his profanations a caiainty, for it was infamously on the testimony of slaves thiiî the profmations were fint revealed

and Alktiiiades later convictedis beside the point Neither is it, That Agathon's Party is,Bfat, clearly not an m faet, a it is the impression created by these coineidences that counts. To the pubïc at are identical in their assertion of an a-poLiticai Iarge, these dirre (phiiosophy, via its and &&&via its "undernocratic autonomy: philosophy via its logif,

"

a,

e,

infamous profanations: not only Allabiades but Phaednis and EQximachos were also

among those convicted -aU together, three of the six speakers in the -."

By

superimposing the three conflicts in this way, Plato is able poetically to associate philosophy with the 'Tfew"end of each of them. He thereby implicates for it not only a method of logical discourse (dialectic, or "philosophical talk") but a religious distinction (baccheia or

m) and, at the same time, an aristocratie stance (heraireia).

At this point we can not help but recall the description of the just society from

Book IV of the

m,which explicitly recommends a rigid (but not hereditary) caste

system based on aptitude for the thne basic divisions of labour. There,the highest (and by far the smaliest) class is the caste of ruling philosophers, who are distinguished by their superior moral and intellectual capabilities, and ultimately by their success at

employing dialectic (the fundamental method of philosophical discome). These ruling philosophm conml al1 foms of public discome as well, even dictating the popular mythologies. Moreover, their intellection places them in the most intimate contact with divinity that is possible for human beings, i.e.. knowledge of the Fonn of the Gwd (a

religious, or quasi-nligious, experience that is n a W y denied to a i l non-philosophes). The phüosophy-caste of the

thus exhibits the essential features of each of the

three npnsmtatives of "the few" in the :-

polirifally, they possess the social

preeminence of a genuine nobility; discursiveiy, they engage in dialectical abstraction

coatempt for the iaws [OU 6qpon~Qxapavopial." None of thse is subject to the authority of the pPlir.the latter even beiag hostiîe to i t The public distrusteâ aii three, and here in the

Plato is unihg the three unda that baimer of autonomy h m the W.We have and aireiuiy noted the striking simüarity of Aristophanes' portraya1 of phüosophy in the in the to these we might add Aristophanes' Euripides' portraya1 of the dionysiac

parody of sympotic n o m in the Wasps.

m;

*'Phaednrs.. Andokides 15,21. Eryximachos: Andokides 35.25.

beyond the ken of al1 non-philosophers; and religiously, they both set the public standards

and monopolize the highest cult activity, intellection of the Form of the Good. We can therefore Say that the

historically concretizes (in a fragmented condition)

these imaginary abstractions h m the

m: dialectic is not the hypothetical

methodology of hypothetical philosopher-kings, but rather Socrates' philosophical ralk; howledge of the F o m is not an exercise in logic, but rather a personal experience of divinity, like dimysiac ecstasy; the philosophers are not some sort of idealized elected

representatives, but literaily a law unto themselves, as 6efis rhe

e. In the &~&II,Ç

these three features are a i l combined in the single constituency of the philosophers, but in the

they are divided amongst three separate constituencies each of which is

itself at odds with the same, more powemil, opponent Thus, what is presented in the

-the W.

as the necessary outcome of the

theoretical inquiry into justice is presented in the

as a senous practical

problem. The Greek ppüS is a type of society premised on the equality of free citizens

-1.

Its laws are justified only as the will of the people (democracy was just the

most extreme, and one might even Say cynical, form of this pan-Hellenic w-ideology). Such a society is every bit as intolerant of genuine class distinctions as modem liberal

societies, and yet, in the

m.Plato demands just that: rigid class distinctions. How

can the dominion of such a philosophical caste possibly be compatible with political

justice? How could its duIlps be conceived of as genuinely k e and equal citizens? How could those citizens (much stronger and more numerous) be expected voluntarily to accept the alien rule of the philosophm? Philosophical d e simply is not iâentical to the will of the many; philosophical religion isnot compatible with popular mythology;

philosophical argument c m o t be translated to the stage. 1s it not then necessarily the case that philosophers share a fate in common with the traditional Greek aristocnicy intnnsically superior to "the rnany," but subject to its collective power? Must not philosophy engage in subterfuge and subterranean &mations of its autonomy and ambition, simply in order to survive? Must it not practice an 06 6qpori~Q xapavopia,

an 'bun&mocratic contempt for the Iaws"? Must it not cultivate its differrnce in secret, at the philosophical drinking panies of the Academic

m? In other words, must not

Socrates (and Plato, and al1 philosophers), ultimately become the very image of

Alkibiades and his sacrilegious

m?

Fmm this standpoint we are finally in a position to appreciate the degree to which Plato has the historical example of Pythagoreanism in mind. Aside €rom the aforementioned close connection between Pythagoreanism and the orphicfdionysiac fhipgpSon which somatic philosophy is modeled in the Svmwsium (Ch2), the

Pythagoreans had actuaily constituted just such an exclusive religious, political and

m.Moreover, the terminology for describing the Pythagorean caste was modeled on that of the m: intellectual niling-caste within several Oreek

In marked contmst to the elusive 'Orphies', the basic fact about P y t h a g o d s m is the existence of Pythgoreioi, people g e n d y designated as the followers of a certain individual. This kind of designation was cumnt in party politics of the hetairia style: there were the Kyloneioi at Athens or the Diagoreioi at Rhodes, there were the Dioneioi at Syracuse with whom Plato was in contact; also adherents of what we would cal1 philosophers would get such a label as H&aWeiteioior Anamgoreioi. As to Pythugoreioi, we equally find them designated as 'fnends'. philoi, hetairoi, gnOnmoi, huntilt%aiof Pythagoras. (Burkert, "Cr& Versus Sect" 14) In other words, pythagonan cults were no less than philosophical hetaireiai.at the same time as they were philosophicd m. Pythagoreanismrepresents an mfiagmented

historical example of the caste of philosophers that is theoretically justified in the and that is fragmented into three separate pieces in the .

Yet the

Pythagoreans famouslyfailed to overcome their intrinsic separateness fiom the & , ~ Q s and institute a stable political society; eventually, the

rose up against them as

against tyrants, and they were destmyed. Could it be the case that the Pythagoreans were doomed to fail in their bid to rule (and, like hem, all philosophers), or did they simply not possess a philosophy sophisticated enough to justify such a system? By using the historical case of Athens, in the ,

to dissect the idea of a philosophical niling-

caste into its three essential differentia (intellectual,political and religious), Plato is, in effect, anatomizing the stnicture of Pythagorean elitism. The fate of the Pythagoreanswas

much the same as that of Alkibiades, and it would appear that a similar fate was to befdl Socrates himself -destruction at the han& of a pplis intolerant of political and reiigious

difference. Does the sarne fate await Plato and the other Socratics? Ch can they instead vindicate Socrates (and philosophy itself) by finding within his example the gem of true political justice? At issue is whether the spiritual followers of Socrates, the "Socruteioi"

of Plato's Acaderny, will be able (in principle) to articulate the rationale for ajust phitosophical anstocrucy,and thereby succeed where the Pythagoreioi failed.

Modem liberal political theory tends to approach this problem via the promotion of public education in combination with representative democracy. This mates the illusion of universal popuiar participation in govenunent while it theontically discredits any and aii class distinctions amongst citizen$

&kens; every citizen is given what

she needs to govem the suite, i.e., to vote. In practice, however, modem Western politics

tends to res«ve power for an e l k class of political experts who are both enaniched and

insulated fiom public intederemce: liberal theory thus tends to serve as apologia for an illiberal declass-system. in sharp contrast to this liberal charade, Plato refuses to conceal his problem beneath the myth of universal and equal participation in government. Instead, in the ,of the citizenry that the

he implicitly aligns philosophy with those very sub-groupings

fears the most. He chooses to emphosire the

incommensurability of philosophy with the

and thereby pushes their opposition to

a crisis, and cornes close to suggesting to his readen that philosophy, Iike Alkibiades, niut

either rule the palir or be m war with itO2

How then might philosophy be expected to justify such d e ? Above ail, Plato must demonstrate that philosophy has the wherewithal to recognize difr~rencewhile overcommgfaction. It is this recognition of difference that is the key to Plato's political

program.= Ail Greek politics pnor to Plato was premised on a monistic political uniformity. To be membea of the same community, citizens were expected to share the

same public world-view and values-system and to idcntifj themselves fmt and foremost by reference to the pnlis. To maintain this uniformity (or at least the semblance of it) the

OQÜS often had forcibly to suppress genuine political, nligious and intellecm

diffmnce? Three great classical iexts, all wrîtten within about twenty years of each

*

In other woids, if philosophy d a s not rule the ppliS and thenby instituejustice, it wili remain one faction among many factions, ali of which are at war with each other. The earlier nference to B&e 422-3 is pertinent hem. We need to stress here that tbis platonic differençc is not the nlativistic perspectivism of pst-modem.& politics. but the necessazy difference that exists between ders and ruied, in levels of understanding. world-view. ways of He.religious practice and sacial roles. The philosophers and the "workers" are to be very dwerent people irtdeed. in general. though tùere was. of course, considerable This is a point about Gicek variation in deof mtolerancefrom city to city and across periods. Athens, as Saxates himseif remarks, was the most tolerant of all Greek cîties, which is why philosophy could thrive there. His own deaîh, however, shows the limits of such tolerance, at least as regards religion. Burkeds analysk of the history of Pythagorranism(‘‘Cuit") maLes the case for intolerance more gencrally , not just in religious matters. though that is bis topic (see above, 1941116)As . for inteilectud f J

other at the peak of Athenian cultural preeminence, portray these efforts as a Me-or-death stniggle of the pPliS: in Euripides' Anstophanes' -, versus the

m,it is the ppliS venus the dionysiac m;in

versus the ohron
m.In the dnunatists' portrayals, the pPlis is victonous; in Thucydides.

it is defeated Plato's treatrnent has more in common with the latter. Thucydides posits

the proto-Hobbesian thesis that human nature is inherently unjust and a-political, and that the

acan only, by its strength, mate temporary conditions within which the peaceful

coexistence of opposing collectives becomes possible. Faction and diffennce are thus submerged in the pPlis, but never overcome by it. The pPlis is an unnaturai historical accident produced only by material wealth, and hence it is fundamentaily insecure. The slightest touch of misfortune may shatter it, as is illustrated by the case study of the revolution in Corcyra (which Thucydides then generalizes to the civil strife that was subsequently occasioned in most of the Onek pPltiS, including Athens):

In peace, there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an invitation [of foreign intervention in domestic politics]; but in war, with an alliance always at the command of either faction for the hur&of theu adversaries and their own concsponding advantage, opportunities for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting.... The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the Qties were many and terrible, such as have always o c c d and always will occur, as long as the nature of manlrind remains the same... In peace and prosperity States and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves confkonted by imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daiiy wants, and so proves a mugh master that brings most men's characters to a level with their intolerance, Plato provides us with Rotagoras' statements about the dangers of the sophistic profession (Protanoras316c-31%) and, for an extreme case, Hippias' account of his empIoyment by the Spartans 283b-286b). It is to this extreme Spartan conformism that Nietzsche aliudes so insightfUy in TheofT m though bis target is really the entirety of the "ApoIlmian"(i.e-,DelphidHomeric) culture of the a h a k Greek eplùs: "Only incessant resistance.sodd account for the long survival of an art so defiantly prim and so encompassed with buiwarks, a training so warlike and rigotous, and a poiitid structure sa cruel and reIentlesst'

m-

(47).

fortunes.*.. In the confusion into which Iife was now ttuown in the cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its master, glady showed itself ungoverneci in passion, above respect forjustice, and the enemy of al1 superiority. (III 82.84)

En&mic faction was the necessary consequence of the inability of the Greek ppliS to disam and incorporate difference. Where peace prevailed it was only through an

arbitrary suppression or submersion of difference. By locating his

precisely at

one focal point of Thucydides' own discussion of this issue (i.e., the aff& of the mystenes and the subsequent slide of Athnis toward civil wu), Plato leaves his reader with no choice but to tm to philosophy for a defense of the possibility of a just and

stable pplis. Far from mincing his words, he makes it clear that the alternatives are philosophical aristocracy. or socid dissolution. EQliS must therefore abandon its cornmitment to strict unifonnity if it wishes to p u n d itself securely in justice.

Ultimately, it wiIl be Plato's dualistic metaphysics of Being and Becoming (and its nification in the dualistic doctrine of eros) that will underwrite this dualistic politics

of differrna. That is how Plato differs h m the Pythagoreans and the traditional Greek aristocracy, both of whom attempted to practise a defpru,"poiitics of difference" in spite

of a monistic metaphysics. As a result, they were unable to bridge that diffrrence by instituthg a genuine commmity of intemts. To do that himseif, however, without

provoking the &into a preemptive strike against his philosophico-aristocratie designs (i.e., to avoid for his Academy the Aristophanic fate of the socratic ,-

. -

Plato

m u t aiso distinguish philosophy in no uncertain terms fiom ail of those threatening

features of the traditionai a r i s t o that ~ so clearly mark them out as enemies of the

m.Having figuratively associateciphilosophy with the

as he has, Plato must

also drive home its drFsimilurzly to hem: this, we may anticipate, will be one important

purpose of the SocratedAlkibiadescontrast. With the inherent instability of the traditional

pplia having been revealed by the Pelopomesian War (and so incisively analyzed by Thucydides), philosophy can now be presented by Plato as the only hope for the salvation of political society. The three interdependent aspects of the philosophers' clah to the stanis of " H(political ' distinction, religious distinction and, undehting the other two. intellectual distinction)are being put forth here in the ,the

just as they are in

m.as the necessary components of genuine republican government -Le., the

only kind of government that can successfully serve the interests of evwy member of the

Having now touched upon the political dimension of the fewlmany dualism in the

,

in addition to the intellectual and religious, we are prepared to observe the

interplay of these themes within the nanow confines of the speeches on Eros. As we noted in the previous chapter, Pausanias' encomium picks up on the religious few/many dichotomy of Socrates and Agathon, but translates it into his account of Eros' dual nature.

This allows Plato to superimpose yet another entirely diffcnnt range of few/many duaiisms atop this one

-f i t and foremost the sexual dualism of homosexual versus

biheterosexual: the mark of the Common Eros is, "first, that it is directed towards

women quite as much as ywng men" (181b2-3). Liewise, this Eros shares in the nature of his ''corresponding goddess," Aphrodite. who is far younga than her heavedy countqart, and who owes her biah to the conjunction of male and female. But the kvenlYAphrodite to whom the other Lave belongs for one thing has no female strain in her, but spnngs entirely h m the rnaie. (18 l b 8 - d )

It is important to stress that this is a dichotomy of sexual orientation, not simply of sex. The contrast is not between male and fernale descent but between males who love males exciusively and males who love males andorJenaZes.The latter entails yet another fewlmany opposition? Other conhasts pile up at this point, and begin to import some of the more recognizable aspects of Plato's philosophy. The CommodHeavenly couplet differs not only by sexual orientation but also in the foilowing ways: love of the body

venus love of the sou1 (181b3-4); love of stupid people versus love of the intelligent (b45); love of younger boys by younger men versus love of older boys by older men ( ~ 4 4 3 ) ; love of what is temporary and changeable versus love of what is constant (d3-e3). Even within the strictly sexud interpretation that Pausanias gives to this dichotomy, there is a political thesis to k found. In his consideration of the laws of other nations governing these homosexual relationships, he says the following:

The reason why such love, together with love of intellectual and physical achievemmt [icai i j ye +iAouo+
*'ïhis a

h explah Pausanias' assertion that both gods are necessary. Even though Heavenly Love is far superioron Pausanias' accoimt. it is Common Love that is responsible for reproducing the citizen body and thereby maintainhg the community's very existence. This considgaiion alone demands that the heavenly lovas be a pmportionately smailer part of the population. '6 1do not mean to quaml with Hamilton's translation. He portrays Pausanias' sense weU. However. in the light of our previotis anaiysis, we may discem bi-valences in the t u t that such a translation cannot help but obscure. Eg.. "~iAoao@îa"is @te properly anslated simply as "inteliectpal achiewment"in Pausanias' idiom, especially when contrasteci with gymwtics, or

to be equivalent, or at least to belong together) that absolute govemments like that of the

Fersians carmot tolerate in their subjects. These include philosophy, gymnastics. "proud

ambition^"^ [@povipata py&Aa],strong fnendships m d "conmonolities"[~ocv~via~]. In other words, the tendency of a people to organize itself into srnail and loyal sub-groupings is a danger to unjust govemments; rnoreover, philosophy is perceived by autocrats as just such a dangerous sub-group ( ~ o ~ v o v i a ) . " Pcesuxnably, such groups develop their own ambitions to rule, or at least to relieve themselves of the unwanted d e of their tyrants, as in the case of Harmoâius and Anstogiton. For Pausanias. however, this is a feature of barbarian states, and of those Greek states dominated by Persia or ruled by tyrants. In thefree Greek pPleis,

homosexuai love is either tolerated outrîght or with certain qualifications, as at Athens, and, with it. the other sorts of

he mentions. It is, therefore, a distinction of

oplis-socïety (ia.,Greek society) that it can tolerate the "proud ambitions" and strong loyalties of the smaller-scale collectivities of its citizens. Which is good, he says, for these powemil, sub-political loyalties are just what the best kind of love gives rise to. 1s Pausanias correct, that the Greek States can tolerate powerful loyalties other than each citizen's primary loyalty to the state? Clearly, the Greeks were in some degree

of agreement with this, which is why they allowed such practices and loyalties to thrive as

physîcai achievement; but placed as it is in the context of o group o f d ' g u b h e d idbiduc~lsw h are a h closefiends d whose association threatmc the semrity of a govemment, we may see a further subtle indication of the socratic (i.e.. "philosophy'*in the precîse, piatonic sense) together with yet another aüusion to Socraies* fate.

(w 'w

Ct Dover, 99, for this alternativetranslation, which is more apt, given the political context of the discussion, than Hamilton's "genmus spirit." a The very sarne point is made by Plato's Protagoras. but via the concept of sophimy 3 l6d-317a). There, however. the refmnce is not to Perskm autocrats but to "the powerfd men m the [Greek] cities."

much as they did. After dl, the Greek citizen @alites) was a %e man" and one thing that fiee men are free to do is to enter into associations of their own choosing. Yet whether the Greek

could consistently maintain its own ideals in this regard is

another mattes; history teaches (as does classical literature itself) that there were very strict M t s on how much sub-political or extra-political loyalty the pplis could tolerate.

One's citizenship had to corne fîrst; ail other loyalties and associations were secondary

and had to appear secondary, tao? This was a nsult of the fimct thar the @,as an institution, had its fiffil genesis in the struggle of the citizen body to unif'y itself against the more naturai loyalties to village, tribe, cult and (in the case of the nobility) household.

Pausanias therefore provides an i&@zed picture of Onek political society in these iines of his, but the practicability of lhis ideal is put into question by the very division of Eros bat he postdates.

According to Pausanias' account, the two Emtes have very Iittle in common. One

has the feahires of the asexually generated daughter of Uranus, the other, of the sexually generated daughter of Zeus and Dione. They are like very distant relatives, at bat. And they are at odds. The one Eros produces virtuous behaviour that is "valuable both to states

and to individuals" (185b6); the other motivates men "who bnng love into disnpute"

(182al-3). These latter lovers should be restrained by law fkom pursuing young boys as

they do, but they are not (181 6 5 ) . Nonetheless, Athens' customs are designed so as to fnistrate the Common Iovers while rewarding the Heavedy ones, and that is why they are

"This is what was so scandalousabout Socrates' statement to the PempS (i.e., his jury) in

that '7 am your very grateful and devoted servant,but I owe a gnam obedience to God than to yod' (2W-3).Theoretically, there should k no distinction here: obedience to the state shouid entaü obedience to g d That it d a s not suggem that something is awry in Athens, namely, the epliS itself, the &&gy,

supenor to those of al1 other States. If one were to propose to Pausanias that the city be magically transformed into a community of Heavenly Ioven only,with no influence from the Common Eros, then there is no apparent reason why he should not choose that option

-much as in the case of Phaednis' "army of 10vers."~To Pausanias, the presence of Common Eros is an unfortunate fact of life, and the virtuous must scrive to avoid its influence completely. It is as if these two Erotes were in cornpetition for the souls of Athens' citizenry; each can thrive only ar the other's expense. Despite his pretense of honouring both gods, then, it is clear b a t Pausanias has praise for only one of them. The Heavenly Ems is good and produces W e , the Common Eros is bad and produces vice;

and the latter has far more foilowers than the former. The salvation of the state and the success of the individual, thenfore, depends on preserving and entrenching the power of Heavenly Eros. There is no mixture, and no

of these two gods. In terms of the

religious dichotomy of privatdpublic cult (SocrateslAgathon)to which Pausanias' distinction corresponds, Pausanias gives us a "heavenly" cult that is not only in disagreement with iîs conesponding "pandemic"cult, but actually excludesparticipation in it." In other words, on Pausanias' own account, the so-called "pandemic" cult is

rnisnamed: it is not pandemic at au, but strictly dernotic, which is to Say, "of the The implication of such a totalistic "Uranianism"is not that the many be elevated to the waie of th few, for a pmly arisbcratic city is obviously absurd -aristocrats depend on the support (Le., the labour) of the many for tbeir very existence. Rather, the separatist utopia implied into two: a mie citizen by Pausanias' position would effectively entait the division of the body of the nrlingc b , and a larger pseudo-citizenry of helots: Sparts- The Spartans, after ali. are in a position to permit homosexud love outright, while Athens, because of its ''mked'' condition (Le-,because its 44helots"are, in fach fnll citizens). nquiiu its more complex customs. His Heavenly Ems, Iüe his Heavenly Aphmdite, "springs entireIy h m the male" and %as no f e d e strain" m it. These Iovers are excIusive homosexuals. It may weil be pertinent here that Socraîes was d e d and had children, despite the fact that he is portmyed by Plato as e m t i d y drawn only to males. This suggests h t Socrates is moved by boih Erotes, as must be the case if he is to be seen as a member of bot6 cuIts, the few d the "pan-demic."

in the demgatory sense of "poor." Thefew do not worship ut the altur of the many. These

are the gods of two rnunially exclusive collectives that are inherently opposeci, though couùsting for the time king in this single pPlis. It is precisely the -,

mies Athens. If we conceive of the

however, that

as a tyrant (as any Greek aristocrat would have

done) then Pausanias' argument that heavenly love is a threat to the security of a tyrannical state actually tums back upon Athens itself, suggesting that 'the many" should indeed fear the designs of "the few" of Pausanias' sexual dichotomy (which, after dl. we

ou@ to expect, given the way Plato has aligned it with the more primary political, religious and intellechial dichotomies that the picture of an unfortunately divided

aIready fears). Pausanias paints the

that need not be so divided. Sparta and other

States are, to him, examples of monolithic (Le., undivided) aristocratie

m.His

language, however, actuaily points us towards another alternative: if &'thefew" could k

incorporated into "the many" without erasing their distinctness. i.e., their difference, then Pandemic Eros wouid be become genuinely "pandemic"

-despite its difference from

Uranian Eros and its inclusion of an Uranîan sect within it.

When Eryximachos takes the floor, he accepu from Pausanias the division of Eros into two (good and bad), but begins by generalizing these Erotes into dual cosmic priaciples. Not only in the love &airs

of men are these wopowers operative, but in

men's bodies, too, and in al1 of nature and the heavens. AIl of natural science, which is prachicai science, is therefore ultimately concemed with Eros, for in all cases it is the operation of these two Erotes wîthin naturd things that detemines whether they WU function weii or badly. Simply put, there is to each thing in nature a range of appropriate

desires;* the good Eros is that which implants in each thing the desire for the appropriate object, while the bad Eros implants desires for inappropriate objects. In the sphere of

human bodies, the "science of appropriate desires" is medicine, and the good physician is the one who can implant the good Eros in a person's body and thereby produce health. The same goes for music, where the two Erotes are productive of concord and discord, nspectiveiy; and astronomy, where the products are good weather and bad weather. Eryximachos ktrays the pythagonan mots of his (basicaily empedoclean) doctrine when he uses music as the paradigrnatic example of natural science: concord and discord are modes of relationship between the opposites out of which al1 things are composed (e.g., hotlcold, wet/cûy, etc.). Health and fair weather are concords of such opposites just as are harmonies in music; illness and natumi catastrophes are discords of such opposites. It is, therefore, fair to Say that the bad Eros is a malevolent force, and the good Eros benevolent. So far, al1 of this is more or Iess consistent with Pausanias' account and, as he says himself, Eryximachos Iikes that account and intends only to bring it to "an adequate conclusion" by generalizing Eros to its hue domain -the whole cosmos. He even chooses similar epithea for the two Erotes: instead of associating them with Aphrodite,

he names them afier two of the Muses, Urania and Polyhymnia. The first is identical with "Uranian"Aphrodite, while the other is a musical name that is once again suggestive of

plurality and divmity. But Esyximachos does întroduce an important difference. Whereas Pausanias spoke as a commiîted partisan of the good Eros, with what might even be "For non-appetitive naturd things (ie, non-living ones) we might use the tnm "tendencies" rather than "desires." The doctrine seems clear enough: for illlythiag that moves by nature there is a motion appropriateto it; any otha motion wodd be inappropriate.

called "separatist" ambitions, Eryximachos adopts more of a neutral position. Standing,

as it wen, outside the control of both of these forces, the good doctor determines for himself what the good of each thing is to be and then applies both good and bad Eros so as to produce the end he deems appropriate:

anyone who employs this [cornmon love, Polyhyrnnia] must exercise p a t caution in his choice of people upon whom to employ it, so as to cul1 the pleasure which it affords without implanting any taint of debauchery. Sirnilarly in my profession it is no little ski11 to make the right use of men's appetite for nch food, so that they may enjoy the pleasure it bnngs without incming disease. (187e1-6)

The implication is that the skilled scientist can "cheat nature." Brought to its perfect fruition, nature gives us health and happiness by the action of Eros-Urania, but the skilled practitioner may safely employ Eros-Polyhymnia in such a way as to get mure pleasure than nature would deliver by itself. Aside from the curious contradiction that this implies

(Le., that there is actually another endlgood preferable to that which inheres in the action of the good Eros, and that this other endlgood is partly pursued by the bad Eros), it shows that Eryximachos does not share Pausanias' separatist ideal. To Eryxrmachos, both Erotes are only instrumentally valuable; and though the good Eros is far more valuable than the bad, both are necessary and desirable features of all things: '80th kinds of love then must

be the object of our vigilant care, in music and in medicine and in all other matters, both

human and divine, for both are to be found in them ali" (187e6488al). Whereas

Pausanias would love to exclude the bad Eros altogether, Eryximachos teaches that the two a c W y belong together -even though they work against each other.

It would appear then that Eryximachos might a c W y be in a position to assert a genuine politics of differrnce on the basis of his erotic duaüsm. The physician's scienrific

neutraiity and instmmentaiism would then be the property of the good lawmaker, who would not simply proscribe the effects of the bad Eros but, like a good doctor, would

employ it where necessary to produce the end he deemed best. Both would be the necessary elernents of any state. The d e r should not be too much of a partisan of either, but be nady to employ the two against each other. However, Eryximachos' famous rnisreading of Herakleitos reveals. fust, that he hesitates to abandon the more traditional

Greek exclusion of merence and, second, that his particular variety of dualisrn would not be up to the task even if he did abandon it. He says,

this is presumably what Heraclitus means to Say, though he is not very happy in his choice of words, when he spcaks of a unity which agrees with itself by king at variance. a s in the stnnging of a bow or a lyre. It is, of course, quite illogical to speak of a concord king in discorci, or of its consisting of factors which are still in discord at the time when they compose it, but probably what he meant to Say was that the art of music produces a harmony out of factors which are first in discord but subsequently in concord, namely treble and base notes. (187a3-b2) Herakleitos' famous example of the bow seem pertinent in that it postulates two opposed forces as the condition for the existence of a unified whole. The bow and its string strain against each other, but by means of their strife a useful object (what we think of as a single thing) emerges. Likewise, Eryximachos has postulated two opposed forces, a force

of integration (good Ems) and a force of disintegration (bad Eros), which between them give rise to al1 things. But the similarity between these two doctrines ends here, and that

is why Eryximachos must misrepresent Herakleitos at the same time as he appeals to his

authority. While Herakleitos' language suggests (paradoxically, to Eryximachos) that concord, or the most complete unity of a thing. is a c W y corn-tuted by discord, Eryximachos' dualisrn has discord as one of its poles. As a resdt, in his theory, the

heaithy state is produced out of discord, but ends by excluding disco& and this then is the meaning that he attributes to Herakleitos as well. Diffmnce, then, while a fact of political Iife, and of nature in general, is still generally negative and destructive. In its most complete condition (and the implication of Eryximachos is that the ideal is rarely, if ever, attainable) the state would be ruled monistically by the Heavenly Eros, with the exclusion of difference. Still, though, there is his rider that the Cornmon Eros can be useful to the skilled d e r . The best attainable state will, therefore, balance these two opposed forces to produce not only health, but surplus pleasure as well. Complete unity (or health) entails the exclusion of discorcl, which means that for Eryximachos the "mixe&' condition of the Athenian pPliS is actually preferable to complete health -just

as long as the rulers axe technicians skilled enough to pull off this deücate balancing act. Herakleitos, however, teaches otherwise, and gives the lie to Eryximachos' optirnistic conception of heaith, or concord For Herakleitos, there is no question of good or bad. The unity of the bow is the product of two, balancedforces of disintegrarion. And this balancing act is not permanent, its stability is an illusion created by nearsightedness. In time, all apparent unities an tom apart h m within by the loss of their intrinsic

balance. A

aconceived in these terms would be inherently unstable, and its unity

would be illusory

-in other words, Thucydides' conception of the pnlis, the very

conception that has effectively pronounced the b a t h sentence of Greek (and a i l republican) society. For Herakleitos' conception, like Thucydides,' proclaims the futility of that pursuit of stable unity upon which the very existence of the pnliS is premised, its claim to be the naturai mit of human society. Eryxhachos attempts to avoid this conclusion by portraying his forces as pro-concord and aati-concord and then curtaüing

the influence of the latter through

w,but his argument is subverted by the fact that he

conceives concord itself as a unity of discordant elements: in the production of "health," the good practitioner, "must be able to bring elements in the body which are most hostile to one another into mutuai affection and love; such hostile elements are the opposites hot and COI&wet and dry, and the Iike" (186d54). Thut, Thucydides might well Say, is what Athens' d e r s have been doing al1 dong. Such health as this is not inhinsic to the body; it is produced only by the action of extemal force (Heavenly Eros) through the agency of the doctor/niler, who stands outside of the relation: When one has to &al with the effect upon human beings of rhythm and harmony, either in theK creation by the process known as composition, or in the right use of melodies and verse-forms in what is called education, difnculties occur which demand a skilN artist [ayaeoC bqp~oupyoûbî]. (187~8-d4)

The naturai state of the opposites hot and col& etc., is discord and that is the state to which they will revert if ever the doctor/niler should relax or fail in his "skilled practice."

Thucydides argues as much in his book: Pendes was for Thucydides the supreme example of Eryximachos' "skilled practitioner," but his excellence was also a rarity. After he was gone, it did not take Athens very long to "fa11 apart," and the rest of the Greek

cities feu apart with it, proving the rule. Eryximachos' misinterpretation of Heracleitos is

therefore actually a key to undentandhg the inadequacy of his conception of Eros. Moreover, this deployment of Herakleitos by Plato to undermine Eryximachos' pythagorizing attempt to use opposites to undergird his dualistic politics points the way towards a genuine metaphysical dualisrn that can provide a "concord within discorcl" with the inherent stabitity that Herakeitos rejects.

Anstophanes' speech represents a major step in that direction. He begins by

rejecting the division of Ems into two and instead locates his chief division within the objeca of its action, placing a unitary Eros between them. By way of his historical story of mankind's genesis out of an original race of circular beings now split into couplets, he

affirms a naturai tendency of mankind towards unity, although its nanual state is aiso one of separateness. Eros is therefore a force of attraction, drawing the separated halves back together. This provides an immediate advantage over the dual-force theses of Herakleitos and Eryximachos. By positing opposite forces as the material out of which any unity was built, they made its concord accidentai and therefore insecure: for Herakleitos, every unity

isjust a passing illusion, while for Eryximachos, unity is contingent upon the action of an unreliable extemal agent (in this case Heavenly Eros, via the doctor). But by instead postulating an attractive force between the opposed elements, Anstophanes makes their

union inherently stable. Having found each other at last, his sundered halves actually corne pemanently to rest. As the basis for a politics of difference,this erotic dualism

Iooks promising. It appears to ncognize the fact of difference whiIe clearly prioritizing

unity? Moreover, the ties that bind an mutual ties of affection, which require no extemal force to maintain them but issue h m the very nature of human beings as sundered halves: 'The reason is that this was our primitive condition when we were wholes, and

love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole" (192e9-193al).To translate this into the political terrns of our discussion so far, it would appear that Aristophanes could be seen as advocating a politics of difference according to which the

difference is, strictly speaking, a birthright of humanity and hence inescapable. In this, he -

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As Rosen has pointai out, even on the best possible scenarîo (the mechanical re&cation of the M v e s by the craftsmanship of HephPistos) an actual retum to the original state is not attained. The two haives though re!united, retah the scars of their division and their essentiai separateness. Their unity is in fxt a "togethemess."

would appear to resemble Pausanias, but without Pausanias' separatist hopes: rather, "the few" and "the many" belong together and are drawn together by the implicit awareness of

their own incompleteness. Desiring to be whole, each recognizes its need of the other and cleaves to it. Hence, the

is a unity despite its differrnce

-or at least it is a

contented "togethemess" -securely at rest Indeed, such a union as that would be difficult to break. However, Anstophanes' shifling of the dudity away h m Eros to its objects incroduces some fundamental disagreements with the dichotomies of the previous speeches, and makes it impossible for us to interpret his politics in that straightforward way. He wams his listeners at the start of his speech. "Iintend to take a diffennt line" from that of Pausanias and Eryximachos (189~2-3).Fit and foremost there is the fact that his prBnnry division is not a f e w h y dulisni at a21. The proto-hurnan cirrle-people were each divided in two, making it a strict bisection, a doubüng of the population. In addition, the division is into equal halves: the opposite of each human is the other half of the sanie circle-person

-same age, same social status, same intelligence, and (we may

presume) same nligious affiliation. In other words, w h m all of the previous dualities we have cncountered have been superimposed in a vertical "few/many" dichotomy that uItîmateIy crystaiizes around "supexim/inferior," Anstophanes has instead given us a

horizontal division of equal opposites. And finaily, though he has no need of the n a w

(having abandoned the division of Eros), his Ems is absolutely "pandemic" -every shgle hwnmi being is by nature the product of a pnor division, and is equally at the mrcy of this god in his or h a pursuit of happiness.

A trace of those other dichotomies can still be found, however. in the various 226

genders of the circle-people. The rnale+male circle-people correspond to Pausanias'

Uranian homosexuais, as Anstophanes himself indicates (193b6s2).The male+female Ncle-people are the original f o m of human heterosexuals, while the third category of female+female homosexuals is introduced anew by this account (and thereafter ignored)? Moreover, there is evidence that some of the other featuns of the previous dichotomies have carried through to Aristophanes' now-secondary distinctions of sexual orientation. For instance, the male homosexuais do not procreate, and this leaves hem the time tu excel in other @airs, like politics (191~6-8)and, perhaps, philosophy? As a

result, the class of typicai Athenian politicai leaders (who are, of course, for the most part still the aristPï)is identified by Aristophanes with Pausanias' aristocratie "Uranians." But the interesting thing about these secondary categories in Aristophanes' tale is that there is

no mention of any seife at ail between the three sexes. They serve the function of explaining the existence of the vdety of sexual orientations to be found in Gnek society, but they are not used to represent any political, religious or intellechial conflct. In effect, Aristophanes has not recognizeâ, in his account of human society, the problem that we have distilled from the dialogue's elaborate context and fiom these previous two

speeches: the problem of difference. His dualism is not even an example of genuine

diffmnce at all, but rather a partition of the same. Contrary to the appearance created by the fact of his dualistic conception of human nature, Aristophanes has actually chosen to

ignore the existence of genuine

within the pPlis.

Y Aristophanes' schema appears to make no room for bisexuaiity, unless we assume that humans are to be unaware of the sex of thek original, and hence of kir m e partner. Then bisexuality couldbe accounted for by epch individuai seeking hi* other half by Uial and m r , as Aristo hanes seems to suggest they might do. Socrates states in the Bpplpsy that to pursue his phiIosophy he has had to negiect his

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family (3 1b).

This does not mean thataAristophanesdoes not have a political thesis at work in

his speech. He does.His failure to recognize difference is actuaily a refusa1 to do so, as

one would expect €tomapandemic separatis, which is what he tums out to be. His speech is a forceful expression of the traditional p&-ideology, based on

m.The

story of the hubristic giants, Ephialtes and Ohis, to whom Anstophanes compares his

circle-men (190b74),was a central theme in Delphic/Womerica-religion, repeated in myriad variations. It reflects the fact that the primary threat to the existence of the pplis was the hubristic tendency of some men to set thernselves up as its masten, whether those

men k tyrants, aristocrats or kings. Thus the chef division wirhin HomendDclphic religion, epitomized in its famous Delphic rnottos, was the absolute separation of go&

and men,immortals and mortals, preciseiy because that separation was required as a leveling device to deprive ambitious individuals of the most effective claim to political

mastery

-kinship of the go&. In the pPliS, no one is so godlike that he can c l a h a right

to rulership; the citizenry does not count demi-gods amongst its numbers. The Giants,

then, and the circle-people of Aristophanes' account, are a mythicai image not of

mankind in general but of kings and aristarats. It was the defeat of theu hubris that allowed for the institution of the p9lis, i.e., human society, and with it humanity per se. The true reflection in Aristophanes' speech of the fewfmany dichotomy that we have been

W n g throughout the svrnaosium is thus the division between the circle-people and the humans generated from them by the punishment of the gods (a ratio of 1:2). Those 'Yew"

an thereby excluded h m the pplis; they are frankly not human. In other words, the kings and nobks have been cut dom to size

-humaa size -and if they do not l e m their

place ("Know Thyself!") and restrain theu ambitions ('Nothing in Excess"), then they

will have to be cut down again. Success in human iife means coming as close to our

previous form as we can be (i.e., as great as we can be) while still remaining human -

citizens of the udifferentiuted

Should we ever dare to set ourseives up as masters

over the human cornmunity, thereby reasserting our previous tendencies, the punishment s h d be severe. The gods do not begmdge our attempted reunification as lovers and

beloveds; in fact, they encourage it (193a7-b6). But to go beyond that, by casting off our moderate humanity in exchange for hubristic ambitions that are not properly human, we put ourselves at war both with the p9liS, and with its pandemic gods. Aristophanes disagrees, then, with the degree of difference attributable to (and claimed by) the members of the various sub-groupings we have identified. At issue is the affixliation of the constituency of the homosexuals (and the intektuais, and the ecstatics, and the

a. Whereas Pausanias sees these as "the Uranian few," and properly the

masters of the many, Aristophanes sees them not as "the few" at dl,but as just one hinctionally distinct subset of the many. The few," if ever they should assert themselves, he expels as inhuman. Anstophanes excludes diffmnce h m the pPlis, almost by

definition; what distinctions do exist within the ppüS (represented in his account by the

three sexes) do not actuaily constitute genuine difference and may therefore be encouraged es long as they stay within the bounds of political right, i.e., as long as they submit themselves to the supreme authority of the pplis, in al1 things. Aristophanes tells

us that

need not mean complete UNformity, but it does mean that there cm be

no political diffmncc.To those who would uphold a genuine fewlmany differrnce and thereby divide the ppliS into masters and their slaves, he responds with the threat of Zeus'

punishment byfitnirer bisection -a t d y poetic justice (Le., those who would divide the

pplis are themselves divideci, and thereby reintegrated). As a result of Anstophanes' exclusion of difference from the pPliS, Eros formally

has no political d e to play and becomes a god of personal importance oniy. Because the is inherently unitary

-a natural and peaceful collective of undifferentiated citizens

-it needs only protect itself h

m extemal threats. Any attack on the integrity of the

pnlis by a separatist element within it which arms itself for the conquest of the nst m u t be conceived as just such an extemal threat: the separatist element ceases to be part of the

&at the same time it unifies itself against the pplis. Difference defines the legal alien. The 'Yorce of Zeus" is really just the force of the

itself as it thwarts the designs of

such nbel elements and "cuts them d o m to size." But there is something quite different

between internai nbeiüon and conquest by a foreign power, and Aristophanes' speech does not seem equipped to recognize that distinction. It "protests too much" in its almost analytic exclusion of-.

and in fact conceals the reality of residual political

difference left over by the historical failure of the gPüs to nuzke its unity secure. In fact (again as Thucydides, and much other literature, reveals) the battle of the emergent pPliS against ail fonns of political diffecence is still being waged at the end of the f m centwy BCE (and if Thucydides is comct, it is being lost). Since the pplis clearly serves the

interests of "the many" far more than the interests of "the few" (whoare denied their

regalian privileges, and thereby their very iâentity), any rebellion is guaranteed to corne 6rom that qua~er,and so Aristophanes' speech effectively begs the question in favour of "the many" and threatens violence (bisection) for dissenters. His blatant refusal to

recognize the possibility of diffnence betrays a totalitarien traditionalism backed by violence (as in Ch&),

and forces upon us the question whether such a violent

suppression of ditfeTmcecm iwlf even be compatible with republican justice. A cipher of the inadequacy of this view is its misrepresentation of Greek erotic relationships. On Aristophanes' account, love ought to be between equals, and equals only: one's "other

haif" is achially a portion of one's former self, and ought to share aii of the pertinent feahues that define one's own identity. In fact, &ek love (especially that between men) was always between unequai partners, and the very rationale for homosexual relationships

was based on that inequality. As a result, even this personal dimension of Anstophanes' account of Ems portrays identity where (as everyone knows) there ought to be difference. It serves, thmforc, much like Eryximachos' misinterpretation of Heracleitos, to indicate an identical flaw operating at a deeper level in the argument (in this case, Aristophanes'

rehisal to recognize the reality of any political me These three speeches (Pausanias, Eryximachos and Aristophanes) fom a triplet which ktween hem exhibit the t h e obvious options open to Greek political thought for nsponding to the fact of a dualistic diffmnce of "the few" and "the many" in Greek society, whatever foxm that

might take, be it political, religious, or intellectual.

Fit, Pausanias speaks for the aristocratie separatism of a Spartan-like utopia that would

exclude differrnce by denying the non-arist~cratstheir citizenship outright and reducing

them to a helot population, thereby technically reserving citizenship only for the uniform niling classeEryximachos then speaks the voice of tolerance, and articulates a rationale for the "mixeci" city that balances the nch against the poor and maintains peace and prospenty via the delicate (and dangerous) manipulation of their opposing tendencies.

Findly, Aristophanes is the reverse image of Pausanias. His aristocrats must become good democrats and abandon their

if they do not wish to be treated to the fate

of the Gimts. AU three speeches reiterate the basic Greek politicai insight that the= can

be no secure and genuine peace -no tme &-without unifonnity. Each portrays , in Eryximachos' case that war is a only war anow the boundaries of d i f f e r e ~though

"cold wai' of parties held in check by an equal balance of power, Thucydides then

documents the consequences of disequilibrium. In the specific failing of each of these doctrines is a clue to the radically diffennt solution of the problern that Plato will provide: h m Pausanias, Plato will take the coexistence of pandemic and uranian cults, the latter a speciaiized subset of the former; from Eryximachos, it is the heracleitean idea

of a concord that is actually composed of discord, a unity in spite of diffmnce;and from Aristophanes it is the idea of an attractive force that binds two distinct identities together into a single whole. We may turn now, in the foilowing chapter, to the speeches of Socrates and Alkibiades for a resolution of this general problem of the political, religious and intenectual difference of "the few" and "the many."

- Chapter Five Dualism and Difference

In the ,-

Plato uses a complex interplay of dionysiac symbolism to align

several different "few/many" dichotomies into a single duaiistic configuration: philosophy versus the

m.'Each of the individual dichotomies that he has

superimposed on philosophy (discursive, religious, political) has its own social implications, in that it divides the people into two opposed groups. Plato stresses both the social reality of these divisions and the threat that they pose to the existence of the &, and thereby implies that the traditional pPliS exists in a continuous state of crisis. If these

social divisions cannot be overcome somehow, then the very possibility of a genuine political community is lost and the pplis must be recognized for what it then would truly be: an artificial institution defined and maintained only by an arbitrary exercise of power. If the g&

has no deeper nature, then it also has no nom, and justice becomes an illusion

instituted by fiat. Three basic forms that such a fiat can take are then indicated by the speeches of Pausanias, Eryximachos and Aristophanes, where Plato translates the dualistic configuration of these dichotomies into their three accounts of the nature of

Eros.' Accordingly, either "the many" will forcibly exclude "the few" (Aristophanes), or l This basic duaiîry is prefigured withia Socraiest own personality, as a result of the single most remarkable biographical fpct about bim -his defense of the life of philosophy at a public aial. The discursive duality is imported via the cornparison of Socrates' "philosophical taik" with bacchic mysteries (Ch2); the reiigious driaüty, via the contrast of those mysteries with drama (Ch3); and the politicai duality. via the sympotic context in combination with AIkr'biades (Ch4). The speeches of Phaednis and Agathon, wMe they cona'bute to the exposition of the

"the few" will exclude "the many" (Pausanias), or the ppliS will be a perpetual war zone

made peacefbl oniy by a temporary balance of power @yumachos).But in enpressing these three "inadequate" solutions by mems of the concept of Eros, Plato also indicates that the love-relationship holds the key to solving this problem of difference. By then portraying philosophy as able to articulate a supenor theory of love that corrects the deficiencies of the earlier speeches, he can both recognize the fact of the philosopher's

diffmnce and at the same time justify that difference by grounding the unity of the pplis within it. In other words, the

must be divided (in this way), if it is to be united at dl.

Both the context of the speeches and the speeches themselves therefore point us towards a grounding of differmce in the smtic doctrine of Eros. Within the sexual relationship between a lover and his beloved will lie the pattern of "unity-within-diffennce" that the

m,too, must mode1 if it is to overcome the endemic faction that will otherwise compromise its integrity and nuilif'y its justice. In effect, Plato has selected a particular conception of sexual duality to serve as paradigrnatic for al1 of these other dualities we have encountered; by displaying the value of that sexual kind of diffennce he can display the value of the others as well.

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A The Problem Resolved The key .to the sexuai duality of socraticE m s can be found in Socrates' preliminary conversation with Agathon. There, Socrates asserts the intentionality of love as a principle upon which the rest of the discussion will be prexnised: love is necessarily a love of somethhg (199dlc8). This is an analytic point

-effectively a stipulative

nanire of Ems, do not thematize the few/many dualism and therefore need not be specifically

addresd by ibis treatment

definition: aH present here would accept that the love they have praised as Eros is essentialiy intentional. The point has to be made explicit, however, because of what Socrates goes on to do with it next. Given an intentional account of love, there is no obvious contradiction in asserting that love might be the object of its own intentionality: i.e., to be in love with love or, altematively, for a lover to love himself? Such a possibility is not compatible with the account that Socrates will develop, however, and so he needs to exclude it here at the beginning. He does so by constnling the object of love to be a kind of possession; the presence of love then necessarily indicates a lack:

'Dots Love desire the thing that he is love of, or not?' - 'Of course he does.' - 'And does he &sire and love the thing that he desires and loves when he is in possession of it or when he is not?' - 'Probably when he is not.' 'If you ref'lect for a moment, you will see that it isn't merely probable but absolutely certain that one âesins what one lacks, or rather that one does not desire what one does not lack. To me at any rate, Agathon, it seems as certain as anything cm be. M a t do you ihink?' - 'Yes, I think it is.' 'Good Now would anyone wish to be big who was big, or strong who was strong?' It foIIows from my previous admission that this is impossible.' - 'Because a man who possesses a quality cannot be in need of it?' 'Yes.' (2ûûa2-b8)

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This use of the concept of love strictly to denote a "desire to possess" enables Socrates to generate a contradiction within the reflexivity of ''love loving itself:" there is no sense in which something can 'lack itself," or lack those qualities which intrinsically belong to itself. As a result, love must necessarily be an attractive force that ciraws the lover towards an extemal object of his desire (as it was for Aristophanes). Socrates has tumed

the prhciple of intentionality into a principle of motion, without even as yet having specified what the ultimate object of love must be. The most fundamental duality within

Socrates' account wilI therefore be that of the lover and the object of his love. This had been the drih of much of Agathon's speech: that Love himself partakes of ail of the features that lovers a d most desirable.

We might well object here that Agathon has let this point by too easily. He does seem a bit wary (by his "probably"), but none the less he allows Socrates to carry him dong to the desired conclusion. An immediate consequence is that (again. like Anstophanes) any complete or perfect being (i.e., a god), which lacks nothing, could never experience love and wouid be immune to its power. Love acts only upon the kperfect, or incomplete, and what the lover is drawn towards, ultimately, is his own completion. This interrelationshipof imperlection and motion is then encapsulated in Diotima's account of the nature of Eros (201d-204~): Eros is not a gocl, but a *,

or

bbspint,"a type of king that exists mid-way between two other types of king (the mortai

and the immortai). Driven by need, which it inhented from its mother (Penia, or Poverty), but provided with means by its father (Poros, or Resource), Eros becomes a symbol for goal-directed activity as such. We may speculate that Agathon's apparent unease with

this result is occasioned by the fact that the Greek gods were popularly conceived as engaging in goal-directed activities al1 the t h e , and as having loves and &sires. Socrates' argument implies that divinity is loveless and manifests neither motion nor will,

and themby excludes these two phenomcna from the irnmortd dm.' Only later, in the

account of the 'Knal and complete" myswies of Eros (210a0212b),will Socrates be in a position to defend such a theory of motion. But to get his account off the ground in this

preiiminary discussion with Agathon, he must somehow ground the c l a h that Eros is a principle of motion, and he docs so by means of this exchange with Agathon.

Socrates next (204d-2û6a) begins to work out the implications of this assurnption

* EIerea~crI shaii nfer to this simply as Sarates' account, as he claims to accept it in its entkty (212b1-8). This difference reflects the clash of theologies of which these two are the respective repxesentatives in the.-.

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for the understanding of the scope of this god's activities, which at the outset appeared to include only the pursuit of beautiful people for sexual purposes. In response to the question, "What is the buse'6of Eros to men?," Socrates introduces what is almost a

b s m within Greek thinking: that the ultimate goal of al1 human activity is happiness? If there is no other object for the sake of which we pursue the possession of beautiful people, then it must be the case that success here makes us happy in itself, and few would quarrel with that inference. However, if happiness is the chief product m) of erotic desire, then it follows that al1 love is ultimately a love of the good, and that Ems is

equivalent to desire as such: 'mie generic concept embraces every desire for go& and for happiness; that is precisely what almighty and aiI-ensnaring love is" (205dl-3). As a result, al1 human beings are lovers in so far as they are active at dl, despite the fact that everyday usage has nstricted the scope of the term "lover" to desaibing those who

pursw specificaily sexual satisfactions. But since the loven, in pursuing what they lack, seek primarily their own completion, it follows that the fuifiillment of erotic desires that "completes" a human life and makes it "perfect" and happy, would also make it Ioveless. This suggests a question as to the difference between mortal and immortal being, because Socrates has alnady said that the gods, in lacking nothing, also love nothing. Would happiness not then suffice to turn a human into a god? Would not "possession of die good" be equivalent to lacking nothing, and hence ta king "perféct"? Unfomnately,

human happiness, if it exists at all, can last only as long as a human life, and so humans are always destined to lose what they now possess, including happiness. Mortals can

never completely satisfy the desire for what they lack because even if they possess the b b t~petuvf' i ~ ~ (204c8). "t(...s6 Epyov;" (2-3). The clusic statement of this is in Aristotle's Nicornachean fil).

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good at one time they must still continue to desire that they possess it in the future as

weli, as it is a possibility -indeed a probability -that they will not. Since the future is infinite in duration, any king that exists in time and is not perfect by necessity will aiways remain in a state of incompleteness, at least with regard to the future: human

beings are perpetually incomplete. perpetually lacking something, and perpetually in love. Socrates completes his definition: 'To s u m up, then, love is desire for the perpetual

possession of the good" (206al1-12).

In this. once again, Socrates' account bears a striking sixnilarity to Anstophanes.' Each of them condemns humanity to seek its happiness in an object that it can never completely possess, so that there is an element of necessary futility in al1 human existence. It is precisely this feature!of Aristophanes' account that many commentators

have called ''tragic," and no doubt Socnites' agreement here will ultimately bear upon the question of Plato's conception of "the tragic." The futility is of a different son in each case, however. For Aristophanes, it is human nature to be physically divided, and therefore to desire a completion that is conceived spatially (or materially), in terms of physical contact. For Socrates, even if the unification of lover and beloved should ever be materially complete (as with the "possession" of the good), stilI that consummation

remains tempotally incomplete. Translated into terms of motion, this explains an

important difference between the two accounts. Having corne as close as possible to satisfjhg their most basic desire (the desire for the whole), Anstophanes' reunited loven vimiaiiy corne to nst; they have satisfied the&pNnary motivation in life and acquired what happiness humans cm hope for. As a result, they have no m e r reason to do

anything in particulaf

-especially since theirformer natzu-aldesires (i.e., to challenge

the go&) are stricily d e d out. What do they do, then? According to Aristophanes, either

they toi1 over the upbringing of their children, or (if they are lucky enough to be homosexual) they get involved in politics. The motivations for these lesser activities are

unexplaineci, however, and are left looking almost accidental; at least, they have nothing to do with Ems. By Socrates' account. on the other hanci, the lover can never corne to rest. Throughout his Me he toils to satisfy his desire to possess the good, but even if he does successfully attain it, still he must toil to muintain it. Even the happy man is always

moved by Eros to continue srriving for the good.

What Aristophanes lacks is just such a general theory of the human good as Socrates' account provides. For Aristophanes, unification with one's preordained "other

half' is, without a doubt, a great good for every human being, even the greate~t;~ but still it is not the only go&. He explicitly States that hurnan nature entails the pursuit of other goods, e.g., child-naring and politics, and the suggestion is even that these goods can

clash with the object of love:

If male coupled with female, children might be begotten and the race continued, but if male coupled with male, at any rate the desire for intercourse would be satisfied, and men set fiee h m it to tuni to other activities and to attend to the rest of the business of life. (191~3-8)

'Because their remiification is technically incomplee Aristophanes' loven do not

rtuaily becorne &le-people but remain two human behgs who stick together constantly. A sign

of theV neccssary incompletenes is the occasional reoccinrence of the deske for sexual intercourse. which is essentiallyjust the desire tojoin together into a single body. There is nothing to be done but to stay close to one's beioved and have sex when the urge cakes one. But having ternporarily sated tbat urge, the two lovers are fÎee in the meantirne to pursue.-.whatever they might wish. Bg.: 'But I am speairing of men and women in general when 1Say that the way to happiness for our race fies in fulfüüng the behests of Love. and h each fïnding for himself the mate who pmper1y belongs to him" (193~2-5).

What Mstophanes calls "the rest of the business of üfe" is not love's concern, and in so

far as we are swayed by the power of love we will neglect these other afîairs. Moreover, this potentiai for a clash of goods must also arise beween Aristophanes' loving couples. Since love is an exclusively personai force (Le., since it exists only in the space between two human beings) it can only get in the way of any other goals that farger groups of

citizens might share -perhaps even the goals of the pplis itself. The spectre of a lover betraying his city to pursue his beloved becomes a theoretical possibility, but one which

Aristophanes does not r a i d 0By linking Eros to a strictly personal, or sub-political "whole," he breaks any link it might have to the comrnon go& There is a sense in which

al1 of this seems obviously correct fiom a modem Western point of view (including the tragic implications), because we tend to share with Aristophanes the sense that love is both powefil and strictly personal in scope; a common theme in modem narrative, for example, is the s a d i c e of a hero's highest values (political or otherwise) for the sake of

some beloved. But Socnites does not share this view at all. Having tied Eros to one's own good instead of to one's union with the beloved he draws ail of a person's goal-directed activities into the purview of a single power and thereby subordinates sexual union to higher principle, creating the possibility that these various goods might a l l be set into good order.

"

Here the example of Harmodios and Aristogiton can be seen h m an enthly different angle. In so far as Hipparchos was the legitimate d e r of Athens, Ems could be held responsible for the treasonous act of his murder. Pausanias hasjust that in mind in raising his example, but he suggests that this conflict between one's cornmitmenu to lover and state can arise ody within unjm States. That is why tyran& and autocfats feat the k t (is., homosexual) kind of love. Pausanias assumes that love, uitimately. is subordmate to politicaljustice, or at least that the two are in no way încompatiiie. ANtophaoes d a s not appear to have auy bat& upon which to agree with thpt assumption; on his account, it wouid always at least be possible for Ems CObecome a ihrest even to ajut state, with the consquence that Ems wodd then k unjust itseIf; Socrates, on the 0 t h han& aims to prove Pausanias' 'Sust love" assumption.

Socrates explicitly raises this point as the bais for rejecting Aristophanes' theory, but his brief critique also reveals an important consequence of this difference:

"'ïhere is indeed a theory," motima] continue4 "that lovers are people who are in search of the other half of themelves, but according to my view of the matter, my îiienà, love is not desire either of the half or of the whole, unless that half or whole happens to be gooh Men are quite willing to have their feet or their hands amputated if they believe those parts of themselves to be diseased. The üuth is, 1think, that people are not attached to what particularly ~], belongs to them [oc y@ 76 Oautdv oipai é ~ a u s oai u x & ~ o v r a except in so far as they can identify what is good with what is their own, and what is bad with what is not their own. The only object of men's love is what is goad." (205d10-206al) As we saw in the previous chapter, Aristophanes' mythical account of the origin of

humanity means that the object of al1 love is not just "the whole," but also "the same." W humans are halves of a former self-identical king ami, hence, are essentially similar

to the object of theK love. Aristophanes aciudly says this: "it is Love who is the author of

our welbbeing in this present life, by leading us towards whar is a h to us" (19341-2, our emphasis). He conceives of un@ as the physical conjunction of sameness,and iilusnates this sameness by means of

the unity of a living body." Socrates makes his point against

this theory by means of a closely andogous example: the diseused living body. The fact

that we are willing to amputate diseased portions of Our bodies proves that there is yet

another good higher than this kind of unity: we may well decide that our "togethemess" with "what particularly belongs to us" (e.g., our own diseased hand or leg), is no? good but bad. In such a case we will seek to separate outselves (by amputation) h

m "what is

akin to us," Le., h m what is ''the same." But Socrates makes it clear that this point is dso reversible: we may well determine that our "separateness"ftom "what does not Co~lsequentiy,eeve the Wves of a male+female Ncle-person are lovers of "'what is akin to them" despite their differing sexes For Aristophanes, male and fernale are an example not of "the different," but of "thesamen

paiticularly belong to us" (i.e, from "what is not our own") is no?good but bad. In such a case we will seek to uniQ ourselves with (i.e., to "embrace" [LantiCovsa~], presumably

by some act equivalent to a reverse amputation12)"the different" This is no small point,

nor is it particularly subtle, so it is worth stressing how clearly the logic of Socrates' critique demands this consequence: it is equaiiy 1ogicaIly possible that the lover should

seek his own good by embracing "the different" as by embracing "the same?' -there is no logicai presumption in favour of either. That is a position that is as antithetical to

Pausanias' "uranian" separatism as it is to Aristophanes' "pandemic" separatism. It might at fmt seem odd that Socrates' construal of "one's own good" shouid have anything to do with "what is not one's own" (i.e., "the diffe~nt")but Socrates is

effectively redefinhg "one's own" in this passage. This gives the appearance of ambiguity, but not the nality. In the everyday sense, "one's own" refers to what

b'parft*cuIuriy"belongs to us, and this is what is akin to us, like the parts of our bodies.

But by tying "ownness" to our good instead of to our birthright, Socrates essentiaily sepamtes "ownness" from kinship, or "similarity." It is basically an epistemologicd

distinction: we are in the habit of thinking of one set of objects as "our own," but Socrates c a s upon us to recognize that things really are "our own" only in so far as they contribute to that which is our "own-most:" our good If we do not h o w our good, then neither do we h o w "our own." The upshot is that what is Iike us may not contribute to our good, while what is imlike us rnay contribute, and thereby become "our own." Having thus established the possibüity of the love of the different, Socrates'

speech turns next (206b-207a)to laying the groundwork for an argument that such a love =TO extrapolate h m Sccrates' metaphor we might use the examples of prosthetics and organ transplants,

is not only possible, but also necessary. He begins with the question, "By what 'activity'13 does Eros do its work?"e

answer is none other than procreation, an activity which, in

its paradigrnatic physical fonn, is grounded in the sexual duality of male and female.

Gmder, however, is not the key feature here. Diotima irnmediately and repeatedly qualifies her statement to the effect that the promation may be either physical, or spiritual. While physical promation does require male and female, spirinial procreation

can be between two males. The essentiai feature of promeaiion, for Socrates, is not that it is gendered, but that it requires two people. One person cannot reproduce himseif on his own, either physically or spiritually

-he needs

mi

other:

"AU men,Socrates, have a promative impulse, both spiritual and physical, and when they corne to maturity they feel a natural desire to beget children, but they can do so only in beauty and never in ugliness....[Wlhen ugliness is near....[the lover] h w n s and withdraws glwrnily into himself and recoüs and contracts and cannot unite with it, but has painNly to retain what is teeming within him....The object of love, Socrates, is not, as you think, beauty" 'What is it then?" 'lts object is to procreate and bnng forth in beauty." (206c2-es)

-

-

This obviously phallic metaphor of "impotence in the presence of ugliness," and the

compulsion to retain "what is teeming within hm," shows just how closely the spiritual and the physical modes of pc~creationare being analogized h m , and vividly recalls the "string" metaphor of 175d More importantly, it reveals that the primary duality is not that

of male and female, but of active and passive. The lover acts upon the beautifid to produce the good out of it, using the other not as material, per se, but as a medium.Just as the body of a beautifid woman stimulates the male sexual impulse to act upon it in such a way as to produce a chiid out of it, so too does a l l beauty excite the procreative impulse in alI people to act upon the beautifid in such a way as to produce the good out of it. Nor is

this in any sense a symmetrical relationship. The action of the lover is seminal: "teeming"

within him is an active "genetic" pnnciple that requires a passive external object to act

upon. An inequality (or

of dual active-and-passive principles is therefore a

necessary condition of the procreative act, and hence aiso a necessary condition of every

act of love. But why should we accept what this seems to entail: that all goal-ditected activiq should be conceived ofos '~rocreation, " and hence as requinng a third object standing between the lover and his good to functionally sewe as the b'means"? In other words.

since the concept of erotic love so clearly carries with it the intensity of sexual desire for

a human body; and the ultimate object of our desires cannot be the possession of another's body, but of our own gwd; why then should we see any plausibility in Socrates' consmal of Eros as "love of the good?' 1s it not simply obvious that Eros has far more to do with beautifd bodies than with the gooâ, and that our pursuit of those bodies often conflicts precisely with out good? 1s not Aristophanes' account therefore much more plausible? Socrates' appeal to the concept of prmation is a brilliant rejoinder to these sorts of objections: physical promation is none other than the naniral production of a good (i.e.. chilâren) by means of the (psychologically separate, but equally nahual) sexual

pursuit of beautifid bodies. It is a weakness of Aristophanes' account that he severs any naturai iînk between Eros and child-bearing;" Socrates instead focuses on the logical l4 The forma is a necessary condition of the latter, and exhts oniy becouse it is a necessary condition of the latter. On almast any conceivable biology, the pleasure of sexual intercourse is going to be related hinctionaily to the production of chiidrien. A r h o p h e s even illustratesthis necessity. Having technidy broken that connection by making sexuai d e s h strictiy productive of the physid togethemess of monogamous relationships, he mut stül explain the obvious coanection ktween sur and reproduction that everyone takes for granted if his account is to be at al1 plausible: Le., upon seeing that the âesïre to copulate was the most powemil motivation withh the divided human psyche, even more than the will to survive, Zeus remrted to

implications of that natural link. It is one of the most obvious facts about human sexuality that we often desire the sexual act independently (i.e., even in the absence, or the negation) of any desire to produce children; in our minds we can clearly distinguish these two desires, despite the fact that their objects (sexual copulation, and children) bear a naniral relationship to each other. This very distinction, however, provides Socrates with the mode1 for his own

abstract distinction between the good and the beautiful. We desire both "a good" (children) mid "a beautifui" (sex with the beloved), and these appear to be two distinct &sires; there is, therefore, a tendency to see the sexual act as itself another, separate "good" (e.g., pleasure) which could conceivably conflict with the frst." However, if we corne to reaiize that the reason we desire the beautifd is only because it is the necessary

means to a higher end (the good), the potential for conflict is nmoved. In so far as our sexual desire then still conflicts with other goals, that will be the result of confusion or ignorance about what constitutes our true good (e.g., perhaps we are thinking that pleasure is the good). It is, therefore, ignorance about the nature of the human good that is responsible for the belief that what lovers desire most of all is the beautiful beloved This

theory would even provide grounds for reading Aristophanes' Eros as essentially hedonistic: what his lovers seek more than anything is their own pleasure, or at least escape from the pain of their artincial separateness, and this they cm find by "putting

thek bodies togethert' Other human pursuits, such as politics and child-rearing (which are

th? expedient of relocating our reproductive organs to face each other so that some memben of the might accidentally rrproduce during copulation.Thus. for Aristophams, the desire for one's beIoved bears no telacion to the desire for offspring. @es

"

For example. by causing us to have children when it is not in our înterests to do so,or to have them with inappropriatepartners.

.

not hedonisticdly motivated) remain unexplained, and unrelated to Aristophanes' Eros. Socrates' account has the theoretical advantage of creating a set of surrogate

"objects-of-desire" -the beautifid people who will act as the media of the lover's procreative acts. Because the good can be reaüzed only through the beauty of another,

that other's beauty becomes every bit as much an object of love as the good itself, though still subordinate to it. ThusTthe fundamental sexud duality of "lover" md "Iover's good, " gives rise to another, entinly human duality, of the lover and the beautiful object

of his sexual attention, the beloved. And these two distinct objects of love (the gwd, and the beloved) are not at odds; the latter is a means to the fonner. It is this secondary duality that will give human expression to the fundamental active/passive

of al1 erotic

(promative) activity: the lover is active, the beloved is passive; the beloved is beautiful, the lover need not be. And, above dl, the mlationship is inainsically one-way: the beloved need not love the lover. By making erotic desire paradigrnatic for a.üdesire, Plato

has capitalized on its obvious comection with sexual reproduction to introduce the ambiguity of the good and the beautifid into his account of the object of desire. It is then easy to explain why people are so often mistaken about the nature of Bos; they have

simply mistaken the tnie object of their desire for the necessary means to attaining that object.16 It is of coune no accident that this socratic account of Eros, in its explicitly sexual

form, agrces so closely with the traditional Greek view of the rationale for male homosexual love. We have aiready alluded to the form of this relationship elsewhere, and its outlines are well-known: in fut,the speeches in the svrnwsium, and Pausanias'

"

This is much the same mistake as is made by those who pursue money as an end in itself, rather than as the means to what it can purchase.

speech in particular, are one of the chief historical sources. l7Basically, these relationships were always first established between an older man and a male youth from within his

community, and were justified as a means to socialize the youth; they might, however,

continue throughout one's life. By attaching himself to his older lover, the youth was able to associate very closely with this more knowledgeable, mature, and well-connected male

de-model, in a wide variety of socid settings. By imitation and practice, no less than by the advice and direction of his lover, the youth was to acquire the "polish" and the

confidence required to participate successfully in the role of an AtheNan gentleman: i.e., h e was to acquire v i r t w . In return, the lover received respect and sexual satisfaction h m

his beloved. The rationale was thus essentially a ouirlpro QUQ. for educative services. In ail cases, the youth was expected to resist the advances of his suitors until they had

proven themselves worthy of the considerable responsibility that the role entaile& and while the lovers might be suffered to display the extremity of their sexual passion and '610ve-sickness," the beloved was to remain staunchly "pure" and without any taint of sexual inclinations of his own. Physical beauty was the foremost feature sought by

and sexual satisfaction was their goal, but the higher, socidy sanctioned purpose lo~ers,'~ of the institution itseIf was the production of virtue in the youth. In this traditional rationaie for the Greek institution of homosexual love, thenfore, we cm easily make out the basis for a cornparison wîth Socrates' account of the activity of spintual ''prcmeation"

"

~ o v e r(&& , 9f. Cf also Dover's judgement that Pausanias' statements are accurate: 'We rnight go badly wrong if.. we simply assumed that ali the statements about Athsentiment put into the m a t h of 'Pausanias* in Plato's S'posim must be objective statements of fact or even Plato's owa considered opinion on a question of facc they may prove to be so in the light of other evidence (and 1thinlr they are). but we cannot dispense with tbat other evidence"

(12). "Eg..

154ad

in tenu of the beautiful and the good. In each case, the lover, motivated by sexual desire, assumes the position of active supenor over a beautiful beloved who assumes the position of passive infenor, for the sake of the production of some good by means of the sexual satisfaction of the lover. Socrates can thus style homosexual couples as "procreators" every bit as much as heterosexual couples, and c m thenby defend his identification of procreation as the paradigmatic form of the activity of Eros. Cornparison nveals, however, that Socrates' theoretical account is far from a perfect match with the traditional rationale for homosexual love. First of dl, Soclates does not specifically contrast homosexual with heterosexuai love, as do Anstophanes and

Pausanias, but spirinial with physical pr~meation.'~ Physical procreation is just the sexual production of children, which requins a male lover and a female beloved; but spirituai pmcreation could conceivably arise between any two people, male or female. In his own theoretical terms, there is not even any remon to assume that a lover must be male: it would not be inconsistent to posit a femde lover and a male beloved," though in reality a female lover could never exhibit the sort of behaviour Pausanias describes. Secondly, Socrates' theory refers oniy to the lover's good, and we have said that as an example of

spirituai prmation it would be the homosexual beloved's vime that should correspond of the erotic activity. But s w l y the beloved's Wnie should count as the

to the

In his most explieit dusion to the traditional homosexual practice (209b4-209c5), Socrates is instantiatiog a more g e n d pattern, as his pmvious exampies (poets and craftsmen) show*Socrates then appears to go back to this primariiy homosexual example in the "higher mysteries." hdeed, the relationshipbetween Diotnna and Socrates would appear to be an example of just that, though entirely in the spintual realm and not the physicai. Socrates' account of Ems is a general one and accordingiy he uses the neutrai term " , 'for the lover in preference to male "e as' at (206c2). ' Alcestis is also maitioned as one example of a lover, amongst other male examples (208d2). l9

"

beloved's good, not the lover's; and does not the tradition declare that the lover achieves an entirely different good, in the fom of sexual gratification (i.e., pleasure)? It is

essentially a transaction: the lover receives his good (pleasure) in exchange for the beloved's good (virtue). An intimation of this disagreement of his account with the traditionai one is perhaps the fact that Socrates does not specificaily designate the beloved's virtue as an example of the goods reafized by the spiritual lover:

there are some whose creative desire is of the soul, and who long to beget spiritually, not, physically the progeny which it is the nature of the soul to create and bring to birth. If you ask what that progeny is, it is wisdom and virme in gened; of this al1 p e t s and such craftsmen as have found out some new thing may be said to be begetters; but far the fairest and greatest branch of wisdom is that which is concemed with the due ordering of States and famiSies. (208e5-209a7)

It is ambiguous here just to whose Wtue the "wisdom and Mmie in general" might refer, perhaps the lover's, perhaps the beloved's, or perhaps even someone else's (in the case of the state and family). If d l of this suggests that the analogy between "spiritual

procreation" and "traditional homosexual love" is not really intended to be very strict, then it aiso raises doubts as to whether we should be conceiving of these things (e.g., the production of poetry or crafts) in terrns of physical reproduction, and hence of Eros, in the first place. Why should we think of the writing of a poem or the discovery of a new

technique as requinng an acîive/passive sexual duality?; can we not conceive of the poet

or the &man

working productively on his or her own? To render his theory of love a

general one, as Socrates wishes to do, he must corne up with some M e r rationaie for

conceiving of the pursuit of al1 goods in terms of p m a t i o n .

That further rationale is provided in the form of an answer to the question, 'What

is the 'reasod2' for all of this love and desire?," raised in the next section of the speech (207b209e). The question asks, essentially, why there even exists such a thing as love at

4. In the answer to this question Socrates' doctrine of Eros is expanded to its fullest scope, to include the entirety of living nature. The "reasonT'why love exists is that mortal things intrinsically strive after immortality. Love has been defined as the perpetual pursuit of the good, so it follows that any mortal object that can be conceived as having a good at al1 has its own existence bound up with that conception of the good. To "possess" a good is first of al1 to exist, and so death is the most thorough fnistration of the good that is possible. But since we are, in fact, mortai, it would appea.that our good is nullified by our very own nature

-unless it be possible for mortal matures to attain immortality

somehow. Without such a genuine possibility of attaining immortality, ail goal-directed human action would befutüe and hence hationdr That is why human beings

bbreproduce:"by meaos of procreating, we manufacture a bearer of our own identity that can swive our death, and thenby achieve a sort of immortality: It is in this way that everything mortal is presemd; not by remaining forever the same, which is the prerogative of divinity, but by undergoing a process in which the losses caused by age are repaind by new acquisitions of a simila. kind This device, Socrates, enabies the mortal to partake of imrnortality, physically as well as in other ways; but the immortal enjoys immortality after another mannet. (208a7-b4)

This same argument explains not only the birth and upbringing of human children, but al1 the rest of human activity as well. We cannot rationdy pursue the good without pursuing immortality at the same time, so that the explanation of a great deal of what humans do

'' "Fi a b o v ' * (207a6-7). " r f ~aida;" (207b7).

Diotima refm specificaiiy to the irrationality of men's ambition [0at&otç Ûv aaoyfac. 208c2], but since ambition for famc tums out to-be just one example of the desire for immortaüty that is a generai feature of ail human activity, this Monaiity reflects back over the entire domain of Ems. AU activity wiIl be quaüy irrational ifimmortality is impossible.

with their lives cm be nduced to that single pursuit of immortality. Most notably, this includes not just the examples of "spiritual procreation," mentioned above, but the specific sort of promation that corresponds to traditional homosexual love: if in a beautiful body [the lover] finds also a beautiful and noble and m o u s soui, he welcomes the combination warmly, and fin& much to say to such a one about vunie and the quaiities and actions which mark a gwd man, and takes his education in hand. By intimate association with beauty embodied in his ftiend, and by keeping him aiways before his min& he succeeds in bringing to biah the children he has long desired to have, and once they are bom he shares their upbxinging with his friend (209-4) This makes it clear that for Socrates at least the Wiue of the beloved is to count precisely

as the good of the lover, which corresponds to the human child in the case of physical promation. This particular designaiion of the spiritual child as Wtue is then further extended to include "anistic" offspring such as the poems of Homer and Hesiod, and the laws of Lycurgus and Solon. Nor is this activity restricted to the domain of "rational," Le.,

human, action: 'The same argument holâs good in the animal world as in the human, and mortal nahue seeks, as fat as may be, to perpetuate itself and become immortal" (207~9-

d2). Even the self-identity of a human king exhibits the same process in miniature. The constitution of our bodies and our mincis undergoes continuous flux, and succeeds in

preserving its identity oniy through an active re-creation of itself from moment to moment, &y to day. In fact, given the fact that flux and change are a feature common to

al1 of nature, the identities of ali things cm be created and maintained only through innumerable acts of pracreation, Le., through the agency of Ems. Eros is not only the one

force that seeks the good in all moaal things, but the one force that maintains the identities of all mortal things as well.

Only one mon step is required to complete this C'emtic"account of human Me,

and all life, as

or "Becorning." If each thing is the product of an act of

procreation, then where did the original identities of things come b m ?Put another way.

how did 'Tdentity." or the perdurability of mortai forms, ever come to be in a worid of genesis? What is the "origin of species" -the ongin of the "active principle" teeming within the lover, waiting to act upon the passive beloved so as to reproduce itself?

Socrates does not expiicitly address this comogonic aspect of the problem in the

,-

though he does in the

m.The question does, however. receive an

impiicit answer in the 'Knal and complete mysteries" of Eros. Ultimately, the "active

principle" is the locus within &of whatever immoaaliiy mortal nature can experience, and so this active pnnciple c m be none other than an image of the mily immortal, or the divine, itself. ThisTthen, wiil be the connection between Plato's dualistic metaphysics and his account of Eros as the quasi-sexual procreation of the good. The active principle impnsses the divine, irnmortal being (intelligible form) upon passive

king (i.e., matter) with

as the result; and it is the goal of

forever after to

carry and preserve that active impulse through an infinite number of mortal instantiations, thereby -and only thereby -participating in the immortaüty of the immortal form itseif. The ''fifinal and complete mysterks" of Ems s m e to ground a conception of immortal, supernaaual being that stands outside of

m,but which is capable of k i n g

expresscd within it. The experience of "beauty itself" is desmibed in terms that both reflect its divine separateness (or

h m the realm of becoming, and divulge its

formative role within becoming:

Do you not sec ibat in that region alone where he sees beauty with the faculty capable of seing it, will he be able to bring fonh [yevfiaesaI... ~ i c r e r v not ] mere d e c t e d images of goodness but tme goodness, because he be in

contact not with a reflection but with the mith? And having brought forth and numind [ t e ~ 6 v... n yeve'o8ar] tnie goodness he will have the privilege of k i n g belovexi of god, and becoming, if ever a man can, immortal himself. (212a2-7) Since the lover possesses an immortal form which is to be implanteci in the beloved, this erotic duality is just a reification of Plato's own BeinglBecoming du&& and is expressed in every "act" of nature whatsoever. The fundamental incomrnensurability of Being and Becoming gives rise to a type of differencebetween the lover and the beloved that is a necessary prerequisite of rational (i.e., non-futile) human activity. In a sense, then, the lover is just the bearer of the immortal principle in mortal

condition. The good after which the lover strives as his own "completion" is essentially just the attainment of that zhmrtal principle itselfto its own fullea immonality, the

divine Form;but since it is instantiated within Becoming, the only sort of immortality to which it can attain is the b'everlastingness" of genetic re-instantiation. The beloved, on the other hand is the passive matter waiting to receive the lover's formai principle, so that out of these two can be bom a copy, or n-instantiation of the lover -be it of his body, his minci, or his W N e

-and this is the lover's good. Finally, this activdpassive

distinction will be the ground of the necessary differenre to be found within ail human activities, not just sexuality but within politics, religion and discourse as weil.

-

B Eros and Politicai DifPerence W e can see now what ail of Plato's fewfmany dichotomies have been preparing us to receive: their incommensurabüities reflect the necessary incommensurability of Being and Becoming, and contain within them the potential for a rational account of human

action. It is a fairly straightforward task to translate this metaphysical resolution of the

problem of diffmnce into political terms, after the fashion of the speeches discussed in the previous chapter. The lover/beloved dualism comsponds to the fewimany dualism of the &ji&i and the

m.In other words, the amust love the dernos as the means ta

prodirchg the vitmous ppüs. The ariStQi deserve the designation "anyQi' only because and in so far as they bear within hem the active principle of goodness and vutue that the

lacks, and without which political virtue cannot be ~alized.In sharp conûwt to

Pausanias' separatist vision of an aristocratie pplis d e d by the Uranian Eros (the Wre loving the like) which would demand a hclot population (of the different) to maintain it,

as in Sparta, Socrates' account makes the "inferior," passive element into an object of the highest regard for the

a, who can achieve their own good only by seeking to provide

the proper guidance and instruction of their 'kloved" -the people they rule. The

politicai difference that Pausanias recognizes but seeks to exclude is thus incorporated bctionally by Socrates into the action of "the kst." Socrates thus dso provides a rationale for the existence of ditfennce in just that fom of rulers-and-ruled that

deprived of the guidance of its more Aristophanes violently rejects. The m, knowledgeable and W o u s naturai leaders, would, in attempting to govem itself, k Iüre

an uaeducated youth seeking instruction in Mmie h m someone his own age -'We blind leading the blind." Ultimately, it is the failure to recognize the existence of the BeingtBecoming distinction, with its implication of an active role for divinity within nature and working through nature by means of the activities of naturai objects themselves, ihat must lead to the atrophied politics of exclusion recommended by both Pausanias and Aristophanes. Pausanias' uistocrats, recognizing that they alone are moved

by a supior divine pnnciple (the Heavenly Eros), look down with contempt upon "the many" who are motivated by a lesser principle (the Cornmon Ems); they are unaware that their own divine principle can achieve its political fivition ody in combination with the willing participation of an inferior "other." Likewise, Aristophanes' "many" look with contempt and hostility upon "the few" who would set themselves up as rnasten, unaware even that there exists a domain of knowledge and expertise that might set "the few" apart

and justify such a role. They do not themselves venture into the domain of knowledge and king and so thcy conclude (moneously) that everyone is equally worthy of determinhg

the projects of the

m,and choose to operate according to custom and majority niles.

Yet in the traditional relationship of lover and beloved, which both Aristophanes and

Pausanias respect and affirm, can k seen the very mode1 of "unequal togethemess" that they both nject for the pnlis. Having provided a theoretical rationale for that type of

unequal personal relationship, Socnites has not only found the means of justifying a type of political differnice in its image, he has also found the means to cnticize and to reform traditional sexual practices as well.

A question might still be raiseci, however, as to whether the unity of the pPüs has becn adequately underwritten by Socrates" dualistic account; for though Eros itself may be unîtary, the "surrogate objects of desire" that it creates to attract people to their own goods will be plural. The lover will indeed be attracted to the beloved as the means to

achieving the lover's own good (which, in this case, ~ m outs to be the beloved's vimie), but to what objcct will the beloved be attracted? Must the kloved necessarily desire his own virtue (as the lover defines it) as the sole function of the erotic relationship, or might

he use it to parsue some other end? Mer all, as a unique individual with his or her own

identity. the beloved should have a distinctly conceivable good of his or her own.To put this into poiitical terms, might it not be the case that the good of the f i ~ t d could be

conceived as distinct from the good of the

m,with the nsult that Eros pulls them in

opposite directions -precisely Eryxirnachos' diffi~ulty?~ How can Socrates guarantee that Eros will pull the two together (as in Aristophanes' account), or at least in the same direction? m a c h o s gave a duaiistic theory of Ems that was similar to the

heracleitean doctrine that objective unity is menly the contingent product of opposed forces in pracess. Accordingly, political unity would be conceived as an inherently unstable balance of discordant elements maintained by the technical skill of a "doctor" in this case a skilled statesman. If Socrates' Eros is to overcorne this difficulty and give

nse to a stable "togethemess" then Sarates needs to show that the goods of the lover and the beloved cannot conflct. Does he supply a sufkient rationale for such a commonality of goods -a genuine community of interests? The answer that Socrates' theory supplies to this question might best be

undemtood in terms of the standard view of human beings as less than self-sufficient? We have seen already how Socrates' Eros is essentiaily the &sire for one's own completion, a consequence of his view of love as a desire for what one lacks. It has always been one standard view of human society that it exists precisely because humans

"

This objection also threatens to coliapse Socrates' politics back into Pausanias' by must procure theu own good, but into the necessary mcans by which the making the at the expense of the good of the darips itself. For example, the Sparian citizenry ceRainly sou@ to impose some conception of "Irimie'' upon its helot populaiion. but it is unlikely that the helots themselves were as desirou to receive it. This is, a b ail, the basic problem with Pausanias' conception of Ems, as identined by numemus &tics: that he W y is only out to jusiify the continued exploitation of Athenian youth for his own hedonistic purposes. Once again, a view given classical expression in Aristotle (Eoütiu1.2). as weU as m Plato himself 369b).

(m

can achieve more by working together than by working independently. The ubiquity of society and the extnme rarity of t d y anti-social individuds can rhen be seen as evidence for the necessifyof human cooperaîion and comrnunity. It is not just that we get more of what we want, but that we cannot even anain what we need, except by working together. This need for others, as a part of our very nature, serves theoretically to make those others themselves into a part of our na-,

with the consequence that humans are bbpolitical

animais." But there is no more obvious example of this natural "need for another" than sexual reproduction (and the whole superstructure of erotic desire that goes dong with it).

The simple fact that our bodies are natiaally constmcted such that we can reproduce only sexually enshnnes the triad of mother-father-child as the most fundamental and imducible form of

conceivable. The child (as a good) is the principle of unity that

bridges the differenceof mother and father without annihilating it; as such, that bodily

diffennce -sexual and p m a t i v e -becomes the sustainhg ground of the most basic comrnunity, the family. By interpreting all human activity as the product of erotic desire,

and as a f o m of promation, Plato cm also then interpret al1 human cornmunity as a variety of this most basic, and nahiral, sexual community. In other words, by translating

the diffmnce of sexual reproduction into a similar activdpassive difference in every goal-directed action, he likewise rnakes this differenre into the ~ a i n i n ground g of al1

commmiry.

Jua as the child is the good of both the mother and the father, the "spintual" offspring of human beings who are worlring together cwperatively will also be the common good for the sake of which they are dependent upon each other. The active

element, desiring its good (a virtuous comrnunïty), seeks out them through whom its good

can be produced; the passive element, desiring to be good, seeks out them who can make it virtuous. As a result, the two elements of the political dichotomy are drawn towards . gwds that converge, instead of diverghg as they did for Eryximachos. Unlike his naturally discordant elements (hot & cold, wet & dry, etc.), the dud opposed elements

within Socnites' "erotic"

both belong together and work together: just as a human

child is oniy the naturai and appropriate product of sexual intercorne, so too is a virtuous

g&

the only natural and appropriate product of the combined political action of the

aand the m.The hierarchical ppüS is every bit as much a part of human nature as childbedng: it ûuly is the natural unit of human society. In this respect, the

offers an approach to the unity of the ppüs not to

be found in the W . There, Socrates discusses the emergence of the ppïls out of

human need, but his examples are al1 of mateMl needs. Such needs as those are, in a sense, less fundamental than that of sexual reproduction. Technically, an "othef' is not essential; each individual person could, conceivably, produce al1 varieties of his,own material goods, but he would not do it as well as h e could by means of the division of labour. As a result, the division of labour upon which the class system of the

is

based is justifïed wholly in terms of the efficient production of goods conceived on the

mode1 of material goods. While this, too, necessitaies the exîstence of philosophcrs who

are capable of answering the Iogically pnor question of what is "good," it does not justify political differenfe in tmnsof the production of goods itself. As a result, the question naturally Mses as to why the workers should accept the philosophers' determinations of the '%ruet' good over their own determinmions of the good, when they cannot comprehend

the philosophers' reasons. After all, ody the philosophes are in a position to understand

why the philosophers are right. The "myth of the metals" becomes a notoriously

inadequate expedient here. But by focusing on a type of human ?ogethemess" that is at once both hàamentally necessary and necessarily unequal (Le., sexual reproduction), the

actually provides a rationale for the voluntary acceptance of passivity on the part of the m. Any woman, in so far as she desires to bear a child, voluntady enters into an erotic relationship wîth a man for that purpose. Likewise, a male Athenian youth needs no compulsion to enter into a love-relationship with his socially superior lover, on the contrary, his success depends upon him finding an adequate superior by whom to be guided. It is none other than the beloved's awanness of his own lack of vimie that opens him to the suits of lovers who can supply what he l a c k ~this ; ~ presupposes the ability to

recognize the virtue, or superiority, of another. Similarly, then, those people who recognizein others the virtue that they themselves would like to acquire, will v o l u n t d y

enter into a bbcompact"to be ruled by them whose superiority is a pemived fact. This voluntary acceptance of an extemal poütical authority captures the rcpublican conception of justice inherent in classicd Greek, and all subsequent Western, society: whether the govemment be democratic, aristocratie or autmtic, it will constitute a npubiicanism oniy in so far as the d e of the Iaws it enacts can be conceived as the will of each and

every citizen. The only question for the

aon Socrates' account is -as it is for any

beloved -how to separate the good suitors h m the bad. Socrates' account provides the answer to this question as well, in terms not

Thottgh Saciatcs succeeded m showhg the Athenians that they lacked howledge of virtue, they needed no one to show them that they lacked whle. It was just this se@-awareness of one's need of an education that created the demand for the sophists. The paid sophist merely assumeci the d e that the lova had traditionaüy played m the education of the wealthy Athenian youthc

available to Socrates in the

m:Le., the best lover, just as the best beloveci, will be

beuatiiful. He=,we can see once again the import and usefulness of Socrates' distinction between the good and the kautifid. Though Socrates does not provide a cosmogony in

the &mp&m

to explain the fact, still his theory presumes as a fact that nahue has

taken care to provide the beautifil as a guide for those beings who cannot, or do not, understand the good Thus al1 people, al1 animals and al1 living things are led by their pursuit of the beautiful towards a good that they c m o t comprehend intellectually. Naturally, those who are especially in the power of their bodies will be drawn only to the beauty that is accessible to the senses

-physical beauty -but even this is more or less

suffiCient for the successful generation of human children. In so far as humans are intellecnial, however, they are capable of nacing the presence of beauty through al1 of its

natural and cultural fomis. Those who seek spiritual procreation will not succeed if they direct their efforts at a beloved who is merely physically and not spiritually beautihil. In other words, Socrates' political j u ~ ~ c a t i oofnaristocracy is made possible by the fact that humans are intrinsically thoughtful beings and therefore are intrinsically capable of recognizing the spiritual beauty of the able d e r , even if they are not capable of sharing the philosopher's intellectual grasp of the good which must be the ultirnate criterion of the genuine "

~ .In short, " v

i ~ isea rype of spirituctl beau9 that al1 human beings

are capable of perceiving, just as they are capable of perceiving physical beauty. When people believe that they arr in the presence of someone more vimious, or more "able,"

than themselves, they naturally &fer to the leadership of that person, and there is nothing unusual or questionable about this; on the contrary, it would be the only rational course of

action, and we are accustomed to doing it al1 the t h e in various capacities?

Just such a rationale is assumed by the naditional practice of pederasty, as expressed by Pausanias. Ultimately, it is the beloved who is responsible for determining

which of his suitors to accept as his "niiing partner," and that would not be possible if there w m no way for the beloved to "test" his suitors for virtue. Clearly, on Pausanias'

account, vigilance is demanded here and there is always a chance that the beloved might be misled (185a5-W),but for the most part the traditional süictures on the practice are sufficient. Of course, there is far more at stake in the political version of ihis relationship: it will not be enough if the

can be correct only "for the most part" about whom it

should accept as its rulers. If some reasonable doubt on this question must remain ineradicable, then that would be sufficient reason to reject aristocracy and mort to

democracy in spite of al1 of its drawbacks. Once again, it is the BeinglBecoming distinction that can provide the crucial determinant of political virtue. While in ail rnatters the beloved should seek a spintually beautiful lover, there is a closs of b e r s whose beau9 is of a whole other order than t h of the typical human being. The upshot of

AUâbiades' encomium of Socrates is that Socrates is absolutely unique: Socrates'

spiritual beauty is so superlative that it demands divine description. In the tems of Socrates' speech, we can see that this is because he has experienced the "final and complete mysteries" of Eros and has perceived Beauty itself (Ch2); in his m e , he b ~ g forth s "not mere reflected images of gwdness, but m e goodness." It is the

between one's having experienced only "mere images" of beauty, and Beauty

"

Deference to a skilled pnctitioner is perhaps the cleanst example of this: e.g., Socrates' fiequent example of doctors and trainers*We willingiy abandon demorracy when it cornes to these things (Laches lW185a).

itself, that makes one's own spintual beauty manifest to the nquired degree. Anyone exposed to the brilliant spintual beauty of the tme philosopher, but who then does not

submit himself to the leadership of that philosopher, is not merely careless, but defective? In Plato's porûait of Alkibiades we are shown a diagnosis of the failun of most people to recognize the justified superiority of the philosopher. The problern is not

in accepting the rule of someone better, but in that humans so often fail to recognize tnie virtue when they see it, or get fwled by a false veneer. Athenian direct democracy is just the cynical response of a

that has too often been hurt by accepting the leadership

of Wtue-less men,and has consequentiy resolved to accept no more "loven." On this reading of the dialogue, one of the chief functions of Alkibiades' speech

becomes just this: to expose the nature of the vice that afflicts human beings, and which explains why philosophers are not the rulers in the Greek cities. Having set up a strong

andogy between the dynamic of the personal love-relationship and the dynamic of classinteraction in the pplis*Plato is in a position to use an example of a personal love-

relationship "gone m g " to illustrate the analogous political failw. Alkibiades' defect is displayed in a single basic inconsistency that nins through his speech. On the one hancl,

he recognizes Socrates' superior Wtue and his appropriateness ta serve as a lover, with a i l of the responsibility that that entails for Socrates' role as an educator. -

It is usefil to consider that tbis stance has its exact reflection in the iraditional rationalistic conception of logical necessity. For exampIe, politicai philosophy has been concernai to demonstrate the existence of an obiigation to obey the laws of the state; a "just state" is none other than one whose laws are so justifieci. Here it is irrelevant that some people wiîi stubbomly refuse to be rationd and therefore not rec~gnizesuch an obligation. It is enough for the theory if we can say that they ought to recogniie it; if îhey do not, then they are 'king irrationai" i.e.. they are defective. Likewise, Piato is descniing a type of spirituai beauty that we ought to recognke, evm though it is not equivalent to the esotuie logical necessity of philosophîcal dialectic. Alkt'biades' refusa1 to be d e d by Socrates does not r e p e n t any weakness m the theory, but rather Eustrates bis stubbom iwtionality.

-

'1think that you are the only lover that 1have ever had who is worthy of

me.... The cardinal object of my ambition is to corne as near perfection as possible, and 1believe that no one can give me such powerhil assistance towards this end as yod' (218~74.3) On the other hanci, when Socrates does in fact supply the direction that Alkibiades says he wants, Alkibiades responds not by willingly submitting himself to it, but by hating his

condition and resisting it as the worst type of slavery: m o put the matter briefly, 1had no choice but to do whatever Socrates bade me. (217a1-2)

....

1felt a reverence for Socnites' chanicter, his self-control and courage; 1had met a man whose iike for wisdom and fortitude 1could never have expected to encounter. The result was that 1could neither bring myself to be angry with hirn and tear myself away from his society, nor find a way of subduing hirn to my wi.l m n the one point in w hich I had expccted him to be vulnerable he had eluded me. 1was utterïy disconcerted, and wandered about in a state of enslavement to the man the like of which has never been known.(219d4e5)

This strange and blatant inconsistency shows that Alkibiades is only going through the motions of seeking a lover, with no intention of actually allowing himself to be guided by such a man;if he was sincere, then we should expect hirn to be happy about this. But, to

his honor, he finds upon acquiring the services of the best man for the job that he has no choice in the matter, and must obey. He wants to "subdue" Sarates to his own will, instead of the other way around, and aims to do so by means of his physical beauty. Clearly, he is used to having others fawn over him because of his great physical beauty,

and so he is used to niling his lovers instead of them nrling him. He expects that the same will be true of Socrates. Though Alkibia&s employs the standard line of reasoning in

attempting to juste his submission to what he supposes to be Socrates' sexual desires, he is in fact seeking something other than self-impmvement: mastery. With hindsight, he describes his encounter with Socrates as a battle of wills to determine which of them

wodd nile the otha -a battle in which Socrates defeated him utterly. Because Socrates was not mastered by Alkibiadcs' beauty, Aikibiades was mastered by Socrates'; and

while lhis is precisely the ideal result demanded by Pausanias' account of the erotic

customs of Athens, it is not the result that Alkibiades had wanted. He has no choice then but to flee bxn his master, just like a nal slave.

The result of this encounter is that Alkibiades is divided against himself: the battle of wills becomes an interna1 battle within his own sou1 between the directives of philosophy and, as he says himself, the directives of "the many:"

He is the only person in whose presence 1experience a sensation of which 1 might be thought incapable, a sensation of shame; he, and he aione, positively makes me ashameci of myself. The m o n is that 1am conscious that then is no arguing against the conclusion that one should do as he bids, and yet that, whenever 1am away from him, 1succumb to the temptations of popularity [qrtqptvc~q~n p î r~f i 6x6 ~ t ô v zulMv]. (216a9-b5) The final clause in this passage might weil be translated: "1 am overwhelmed by the

authority of the many." According to the directives of philosophy, it is spirituai beauty that is most real and most valuable. Alkibiades possesses that spiritual beauty, but as yet

it is weak and largely still an undeveloped potential -the reverse of his physical beauty (219a1-4); but according to the directives of "the many,"it is physical beauty that

mat=

and this is just what Alkibiades possesses. 'The many" flatter him, while

Socrates makes him feel "ashamed." Alkibiades clearly prefers the flattery, but he is powerless against Socrates' authority while under the 44spdl" of Socrates' talk. However,

the contlict is not simply between spiriaial and physical beauty, but between Socrates' beauty and Alkibiades' own beauty. It is the struggle between his belief that he lacks something and his beiief that he is already, essentiaily, perfect When aot under Socnites'

direct influence, Alkibiades loves himseZfmost of d l , a condition which violates the nannal direciedness of Eros towards the attainrnent and maintenance of the good (which is necessady extemal, or the not-self, for mortal beings). Self-love effectively nullifies

the power of Eros because its action wil1 be stymied and no good produced. Self-love also

wil1 leave one alienated h m the other who is one's nanual complement in the constitution of the epüs,with the result that one will not be joined in a real community with them: unable to conceive of a genuine erotic union with S m t e s . Alkibiades must

conceive of their duality as a hostile opposition, or warfare. This analysis of Akbiades' &fect agrees well with the general epistemological conceit of which Socrates condernns ai1 of mankind in the &&gy:

those who believe

that they already know what they do not know will never leam what they need to know.

Likewise here in the :

those who love themselves (the same) rather than the

other (the different) wil1 be every bit as "motionless" as Aristophanes' sated loving

couples. But Alkibiades at least has an advantage over most Athenians in that, unlike

hem, he has seen and understood the spiritual beauty of philosophy, in the pmon of Socrates. The simple fact that his sou1 divides against itseif as it does in Socrates' presence shows that he is indeed one of those "who yearn to enter by initiation into union with the gods" (215~5-6).Alkibiades, thenfore, has the potential to be of use to Socrates' in his own attempt to generate their cornmon good out of Alkibiades' physical and

spintual beauty, unlike most Athenians who would 'probably find Focrates'] conversation utterly ridiculous" (221e1-2) and who are "bound to laugh at his way of

speaking" (221e6-222al).That Socrates failed to make good of him is a testimony not to the weakness of his philosophy but to the smngth of its opposite, the many; Plato too

failed on that account, with Dionysius. Finally, it is worth dfawing our attention to a passage fkom the

that stands

forth in sharp reüef under the light of this analysis of political Eros in the.There, Socrates is talking with Callicles, a man of action in Athenian democratic politics. The few/many contrast of philosophy and

is stated in no uncertain ternis by

Callicles in a passage where he rejects the life of philosophy: when 1see an older man still studying philosophy and not deserting it, that man,Socrates, is actuaily asking for a whipping. For as 1said just now, such a man, even if exceptionally gified, is doomed to prove less than a man, shunning the city center and market place, in which the poet said that men win distinction, and living the nst of his lifé sunk in a corner and whispering with three or four boys. W.485dlcl)B Such is "the authority of the many" that ALkibiades must contend with in Socrates' absence. The agreement with Alkibiades' own words in the

is suiking:

He compels me to realize that I...persistently neglect my own me interests by engaging in public life. So against my real inclination 1 stop up my ears and take refuge in fight...oth&se 1should sit here beside him till 1was an old man. (216a4-8) It is in just this context of the asserted incommensurability-even hostility -of philosophy and democratic politics that we find the passage that so resonates with this

L have observed that you [Callicles] and I have now undergone much the

same experience, for each one of us is in love with two objects -1with Wcibiades, son of Chias, and philosophy, and you also with two, the Athenian demos and Demos,son of Pyriiampes. (Goreiaî 481d) This is a remarkable passage for several nasons. First, it designates Callicles, the democratic politicim, as a lover of the

clearly, he is someone who strives to effect

political goals, or goods, through his leadership and direction of the democratic assembly. Enghh quotations from the

are translated by Woodhead (Hamilton & Caims).

is necessarüy a politician, or statesman. Second, it

We see that a lover of the

contnists Alkibiades with a man nanzed Dernos, the son of a staunch supporter of the demaracy; at the sarne time, it contras*, philosophy with the

a, thereby making

Alkibiades into something of a symboi for both aristocracy and philosophy. Third, it identifies Socrates as a lover, too, and hence as similar to Callicles in that he seeks to produce good out of his beloved. The most strücing feature of this cornparison, however, is its implication that Socrates is not a lover of the A t h i u n W.Yet if Socrates is a true philosopher. should he not then dso be a lover of the -,

analysis of the?-

This passage h m the Gor-

but it is the contrast between the

in the terms of our

telis us that is not the case,

and the Reoublic that ailows us to

undcrstand why. The lover is drawn to beauty, both physical and spintual beauty. If the true phiiosophers are to be loven of the

then presumably they will be lovers only

of a beautifid duaQS for, in Diotima's words: "[procreation] cannot take place in disharmony, and ugliness is out of harmony with everything divine, whereas beauty is in harmony with it" (206~8-d2).But what would a beautifid alook like?The shows us. While the

us an historical ppliS state, the

portrays an idealized pplis, the

instead shows

-Athens, in al1 of its democratic degeneracy.In this histoncal

is ugly and hence uncongenial to the leadership of the philosopher, with

the result that the philosopher c m o t be a pditicimr. That is why Socrates cannot engage in public life, as he says in the Awlogu; he cm speak only to "the few," in pnvate, if he wishes to achieve anything usehl at ail. Alkibiades, on the other hami, is both a lover of philosophy (when he is with Socrates) and a lover of the Socraies). Socrates says of Alkibiades, to Callicles:

(when away nom

It is [philosophy], my fnend, who says what you now hear from me. and she is f a -less unstable than my other favorite, for the son of Clinias is at the mercy now of one argument. now of another, but philosophy holds always to the same. (Garnias4826 Alkibiades' inability to overcome his love of the

has left him in its power, and

nullified his chance of ever becoming vimtous under Socrates' tutelage. Since the most rernarkable biographical featwe about Alkibiades is his spectacular political failure, Plato

can use that biography to illustrate the uagic consequences of a failure to become properly erotic. It is dso not an optimistic outlook for Athens: neither cm the philosopher love the

in this condition, nor can the Purins recognize the virtue of the

philosopher. But by means of the doctrine of spiritual beauty, Plato has rendered it possible in principle to identify a virtuous leader, and hence to establish a just,

-

C Eros and Religious W e first raised the problem of religious difference at the end of the second chapter and then explond it at more length in the third chapter, so it is not necessary to go over that ground again. The outlines of the conûast are d e r . on the one hanci, Socrates and his

philosophy have been assimilated to the orphidbacchic/pythagoreanreligious movement with its focus on ecstatic mystcries and their allegorical interpretation; on the other han4

Agaîhon and drama have been used to represent the public religion of the pPlis, which has its mythicai basis in Homer and Hesiod and its practice rooted in the traditions of the Athenian people and state. What we are lefk with is the problem of accornmodating this

difference in such a way that the state religion need not be conceived as hostile to

philosophy, and vice versa As we have had occasion to note already, this is no small matter, but concerns the guilt or innocence of Socrates on the charges of which he was convicted and sentenced to hath -charges of compting the youth by way of introducing religious novelties. At his trial Socfates is uncompromising in his adhemce

to his personal "mission of service to god" that was prompted by the delphic oracle, and to his mist in his "divine sign." Both are presented by him as of unimpeachable divine authority, and yet each &man& Socrates' own personal interpretation in order to be

meaningful. Monover, in the various dialogues that touch upon religious matters, Socrates is consistently pomayed as critical of popular mythology. And yet there are also

nuwrous hints in the dialogues that Socrates participates fuily in the public religious

practices of his cornmunity." These facts of Plato' s presentation, taken together with Socrates' claim to be not guilty as charged, seem to demand an obvious resolution by

Plato: that Socrates accepts the piety and the authority of the public cults and their traditional practices but strongly disagrees with the public understanding of the meaning

of those cults. But can the L'publicun&rstanding9'of the cults reaily be so easily separated

from one's participation in them? If the contrast between these two "theologies" is to be one of tme-and-faise, as our analysis has suggested (esp. Ch3), then it might weii be cynical of Socrates to participate in cults that are based on fuise beliefs about the gods

and their relationship to humanity. Cleatly, this is an issue that lmms large in Plato's thought as a whole, and we

"

E.g.. his participation in the introduction of the cult of Bendis, in the &&& (327a3286; Nicias' comment that Lysîmachos must h o w Socrates ooly by his participation at samif~ces (187d-e). Even here in the Svmwsium,we are told b a t Socrates with his father?inthe (176a), and b a t he said made the usaal offeriogs to the god More the kgÏnning of the a prayer to the Sun afta standhg ail night on campaign (22Od5).

may well agree with John Anton that Plato's re-conceptualizing of the meaning of his entire culture and its traditions -including Greek religion -is one of the chief tasks of

his thought. The

itself does not deal with the issue as thomughly as we rnight

like, and so OUT resolution of the problem of the religious difference of philosophy must remain sornewhat speculative. That said, we must still admit that Plato has given us a great &al of evidence in the

on which to base our speculations. F h t and

foremost is the fact that the contrast has been used as a framework for the presentation of the various speeches. in the form of a contest of wisdom between Socrates, the

philosopher, and Agathon, the tragedian. In this way the two separate "religions" are translated into the realm of words where they could, in prînciple, be brought before the

bar of logic and tnith, as rival theologies. Without actually presenting any such theological debate, Plato still has a judge

-and a divine one at that -appear to give

Socrates the Mctory in this "contest of wisdom." But the double mwning a f f i i their

equal validity &spite the attested superiority of philosophy, which m u t mean that they

are not rivals engaged in the same activity. The very image of these hvo cults that exist simultaneously within the same epüs then emerges from Pausanias' speech as the cults of

Uranian and Panâemic Ems. As we saw in our analysis of that speech. Pausanias himself could not conceive of the two cults as overlapping, but only as opposecl, or even hostile, but we noted that the very terminology suggests a way of overcoming the opposition: namely, for the members of the Uranian cult to k,at the same t h e , members of the

Pandemic cult as well, so that the latter becomes mily "pan-demic," or inclusive of the

entire pPiis, including the philosophm. That such a universality is the claim of the actual pplis-cults is, of course, undoubted -and is the ground of the charges laid against

Socrates. The question, then, is whether these OHO religions can be rendered compatible in

such a way that the same people (i.e.. the philosophers) could tnily be commined both to their own "highe?' conception of the gods and to the publicly attested gods as well. An approach to solving this problem is suggested by the generality of the few-

many conaist that mns throughout the :

since philosophy has been associated

both with the religious 'Yew" of the ecstatic sects and with the political 'Yew" of the aristocratie factions, we should expect the problem to be resolved in a similar fashion

within each of these domains. The political dichotomy was justified by interpreting it as one reification of the erotic dualism of lover and beloved. Can the religious contrast be interpreted as another such nification? To do so would be to conceive of an Uranian cult of philosophers whose direct intellectual access to the divine fonns (such as Beauty itself)

gives them a religious authority over al1 non-philosophers, and hence a leadership role within the Pandemic pplig cults. The pplis cults would then be conceived as providing the people with an avenue of approach to divinity in the absence of direct intellection. If this relationship could be conceived as necessarily asymmetrical but reciprocal (after the fashion of sexual reproduction) then we would have a rationale for the existence of two separate cults. It shouid be noted that since the constituencies of the two cults would comspond exactly to the political classes. and since it is the same inteilectual expexience that distinguishes the philosophers in each case. this rrligious dichotomy would not really

be separate from the politicai dîchotomy at all; they would be one and the same. To cal1 one of them religious os opposed to politiccil is essentially just to speak of different aspects of the unitary leadership role of the philosophers in the Dpüs. In so far as the

philosophers manage the affairs of state, we may speak of their political diffmnce.while

insofar as they manage the citizens' dealings with the go&, we speak of their religious

Here, we m u t attend to the issue of reiigious esotericim as it fin& expression in and in Plato's other dialogues. Esotericism is the most essential feature of

the

the mystery cults upon which Plato has modeled philosophy in the , -

and yet it

is a double esotericim that Plato refers to on morr than one occasion. In phcular, Diotima is explicit in describing two levels of the mysteries of Ems, and her language appears to correspond to the two levels of initiation at Eleusis. It is forjjust this reason that so many commentators have concluded that her language is intended simply as an allusion to Eleusis. But that crucial passage from the

that we had occasion to

draw upon earlia also provides a clue to the significance of this division into levels. To quote it once again, S m t e s says there, r e f d n g to bacchic mysteries: Perhaps these people who direct the religious initiations are not so far from the mark,and all the tim thm has been an degoricd meaning beneath their doctrine that he who enters the next world uninitiated and unenlightened shall lie in the mire, but he who arrives the# purified and eniightened shall dwell among the gods. You know how the initiation practitioners Say, "Mmybear the emblems but the devotees [po'ricxoq are few"? Weil, in my opinion these devotees are simply those who have lived the philosophical iife in the right way. (69~342)

That Socrates is quoting "the initiation practitioners" when he says that then are few genuine

amongst the initiates implies that it is both common knowledge and the

nom in such mysteries. The god" and have Urnefore experienced

arr initiates who have actually been "taken by the

-the

and ''transport" of

d. The other initiates, we must presurne, have gone through the motions of king initiated but have fallen short of mie exstasy. This difference between the many narthex-

bearers and the few real baEEhpi may well bear upon the distinction Plato wishes to set up between the cult of philosophy and the public cults in the .speech makes clear, only the

For as Diotima's

e, or "perfect," philosophers -who have seen "Beauty

itse1f"- are in a position to speak of divine matters in tems of truth and reality. Ail other philosophers, and non-philosophers as well, would be confined to producing (and. presumably, to speaking of) "images" of beauty and goodness. Thus, Diotima's philosophers of the

correspond to Socrates'

of the

m,just as

Socrates' language there would suggest. And fiom Alkibiades' speech we have inferred

that Socrates is such a one. If we inquire as to the difference between the a i e

and the rest of the

initiates, it tums out to be much the same difference as that between the

and the

non-initiates. This does not mean that there is no difierence between the lesser initiates

and the non-initiates. There is an important difference: the initiates are progressing towards the 'Knal and complete" mysteries while the non-initiates are not. But this also

means that it is not smcient just to be a philosopher, in order to be an authority in the state. One m u t k a "perfect" philosopher. Still, those lesser initiates have acquired

learning and preparation in the form of myths and doctrines; do those myths and doctrines not constitute ''the truth" about the go&? Here, we must take note of Diotima's change in tone as she moves h m the lesser to the p a t e r mysteries of Eros. Many commentators have noted how she abandons argument at this point and speaks in tems of experience, as if admitting that she cannot give Socrates reasons to accept what follows and that she

m u t ask him to take it ail on faith. Her description of those mysteries is almost entirely in negative terms -what the experience of Beauty itself wiIl not be Iüce: it will not be like

his expen'ence of beautifil things. She seems quite unable to express either in

or

even in language what these mysteries will be iike. Do her statements then constitute an example of 'We tnith" about the go&? At best, they can be an approximation of a truth that apparently cannot be expressed to one who has not shared the experience. In other words, the myths and dachines of the lesser initiates are not the full tmth, but approximations to i t Recalling now the results of our second chapter, that the logical, dialectical speech of "philosophical talk" is what constitutes the lesser mysteries of Eros,

a solution to our problem presents itself: "myth" is essentially a metaphor, a stable approximation of the m t h that attempts to express in familiar, natualistic terms an idea that cannot accurately be represented in those terms at ail; "logic" (or dialectic), on the

other hand, is an investigative method, a dynamic approximation of the tmth that leads one, by abstraction, up from one's naturalistic terms of reference to the supematural experience of the final mysteries: Beauty itself.

Once again, here, as in the case of the justification of a political aristocracy, it is the incommensurability of Being and Becoming that underlies the necessary division of

Greek religion into higher and lower castes. Logic and didectic lead towards Being, while myth is firmly rooted in Becorning. Without getting into a general discussion of the nature of religion itself, it is probably safe to Say that aii religion has a pragmatic dimension: it helps us to manage our own Iives by giving us a basis from which to engage with those factors in human life that are beyond human control. In any case, there is no deaying that the pragmatic element was dominant in Greek religion; even the mysiery

cults thernselves tended to be expressly pragmatic, as Burkert has shown. Yet if religion is to be pragmatic, its highest hsights must somehow be translatable into naturalistic

te-,

just as they give rise to naturalistic action. But how rnight such a "translation" be

performed, given that Being and Becoming - or the gods and nature -are incommensurable, the one rational and the other irrational? This is much like asking for a

logical account of the way that Being acts upon Becoming in the production of "things," or nanual objects. In so far as any such account must contain Becoming as one of its

nferents, it is impossible for the account itself to be raised to the level of

w, or

knowledge. This wouid appear to be a consequence of Plato's Being/Becoming distinction itselE that only one half of this dichotomy is "logical." Neither nature itself nor the interaction of nature and god can be expressed rationally, which entails that these things can be expnssed, if at ail, ~ n l by y some means othtr than ngorous logic. Likewise,

- a respectful humility before god on the one hand versus ecstatic union with god on the other the differing religious experiences within the practice of thcse cults

should be conceived as equally acceptable and necessary in the circumstances of the two

cults. Popular religion, then, will be the non-logical means by which the people cm enter into an appropriate mode of relation to a divinity that they can never directly know or encounter.

However, ihis conception of popular religion demands for it a divine source of authority, as is indicated by the term "appropriate" in the last sentence. How is the public to know what is appropriate if they cannot directly know or communicate with the gods?

The standard answer to this question within Gnek religion itself would simply be that tradition contains the tmth about what is most appropriate and that the traditions

themseives were instituted by some divine communique nom the long-forgotten past, with the result that the oldest and most consmative of citizens will tend to be

authoritative in these matters. Unfortunately, as is well known, such traditionalism as this is likely to be rigid and inflexible, while times change, so that a developing culture will inevitably occasion demands for the revision of cult practices in order to make them compatible with new conditions." Such a modification of traditions dernands divine authorization and Greek religion therefore developed a means to acquire such authorization: oracles. Oracles provided a means for Greeks,both individuals and States, to inquire after and to receive divine guidance in conducting their affairs, including their reiigious affairs. The most famous and authoritative of Greek oracles, at Delphi. was used

in just this way. It famously recorded the unintelligible ravings of an ecstatic priestess, the Pytha, and then 'Tnterpreted" those ravings into a statement applicable to the &airs of the supplicant. On our analysis of the religious symbolism used by Plato in the

,-

the authority of the ''W' philosophers in relation to the public cuits

would be comparable to that of the oracles: the philosophers' "ecstatic" intellection of "&

u' gives them an immediate apprehension of truth, but in a supernaturai fom that cannot be rendend accurately into naturalistic speech. But by 4binterpreting"this insight into naturalistic terms they are able to renderjudgements in religious matters

-and

perhaps even to introduce 'hovelties." The ruling caste of ''Wphilosophers would be,

as it were, a source of oracular outhorityfor the palic-cults. Diotima's laquage in describing the class of beings cailed " s p i n t s " ~ of. which Eros is one, suggests precisely such a role for the."perfect" philosopher:

a?"

"And what is the function of such a king [Le., a 'Tointerpret and convey messages to the gods fimm men and to men h m the gods, prayers 3o An example would be the phasing-out of human s d c e as cuirs become more "civilized," but there are many examples of this sort of thing, including the introduction of new

calts.

and sacrifices h m the one, and commands and rewards from the other.... Through this class of k i n g corne all divination and the supemaniral skill [tov iepéov + é ~ v q of ] priests in sacrifices and rîtes and spelis and every kind of magic and wizardry. God does not deai directly with man; it is by means of spints that all the intercourse and communication of gods with men, both in waking üfe and in sleep, is cmied on. A man who possesses ski11 in such matters is a spirinial man,.... Spirits are many in number and of many kinds, and one of them is Love." (202e2-203a8)

Since the "perfect"philosopher is none other than the highest initiate in the mysteries 4 Ems, and a person who has direcdy experienced a divine Form, it seems clear that

Diotima means to desipate that philosopher as skilied in "the intercourse and

communication of gods with men," though her language would appear to leave room for

many additional avenues of bbintercourseand communication" other than philosophy perhaps including the traditional oracles such as at Delphi.

Plato's rnetaphysical dualism of Bcing and Becorning can thmfore be used to undergid this religious differlnce of ecstatic philosophen and pragmatic W.The incornmensurabilityof the two levels of king is reflected in the incommensurable foms of religious experience offered by the two cults and the incommensurable forms of discourse through which they are articulated. But this incommensurability is also what

d e s the lower levels of religious activity possible and necessary. Because they are incommensurable, they do not conflict, although they are diffenat. Without the myths and the rîtuals that are corrected, maintained and, perhap, even suppüed by the

"oracular" philosophers, the

would be lost and helpless in its relation to divinity;

while without the "vulgar and uninitiated [pt$qA65 se KU\ &~POIKOC]of the

the

philosophers could not put into practice what the gods demand of humanity. Yet because the philosophers, tw, Iive within nature and rnust act naniralistically in the conduct of

their own lives and affairs, they too need the appropriate myths and rituals that give shape to their human iives in response to the &man& of the gods. In the ecstatic act of intellection, the philosophen lmow themselves to be god-like and to be participating in Being; but as living human beings caught in the web of Becoming they also know themselves to be ignorant, finite, and incomplete matures who must prostrate thernselves before the immortal powers. The philosophm participate in both the "Uranian" cult of phiiosophy and the "Pandemic" cult of the

a. and they are a part of the

despite their d i f f s .

-

D Ems and Discursive Differenlre We have aiready discussed the conmst between philosophical talk and tragic poetry at some length in our third chapter, but our subsequent treatment of the erotic dualism of the

now puts us in a position to characterize that dichotorny more

fûily. If the characteristic mode of philosophical discourse is logical, which is to Say abstract, rational and "dialectical," while the charactenstic mode of mgic discourse is poetic, which is to Say concrete, mimetic and mythical, then these two modes can be

aligned with one of the more well-known images from Plato's -:

the divided line.

Accordingly, philosophicd tak addresses itself to the intelligible realm, while tragic

poetry, together with the language of everyday life and everyday experience, will be addnssed to the visible realni. In so far as poetry and myth attempt to express the "highest things," i.e.,the gods and our relationship to them, they do so in terms of the visible realm. Since these highest things are not ofthe visible realm, such mythicai

representatÎon must fail short of the truth, and yet the irnpon of these highest things

canot help but be so be expresse& men as the visible realm itselfis mi eqression of those higher things. In fat, the divided line of the

would appear to correspond

nicely to the categories of people we have discemed here in the :level on the line,

the lowest

aor imagination, is possessed by al1 hurnans in so far as they diink

at dl; the next higher level, piSfiS or belief, is the level at which myth operates, and al1 reflective people would exhibit this type of thinking; next is dianoia or thought, where concepts are employed logically qua intelligible, and this is the type of thinking that is characteristic of philosophers; finally,

a, or understanding, would comspond to the

intellecnial apprehension of the foms by the felrPi phiiosophea, who perceive the divine in itself. Though each level is distinct fiom the others, each also entails participation in al1

of the ones below it. The

does not address these matters in detail, and we merely note here

how well the two dialogues appear to agree. But, once again, it is worth stressing that what appean to be an entirely negative designation of the lower levels of thought in the

is k i n g affirmed as somehow positive in the .

Agathon's c

m and

his role in speaking to the people reminds us that the vast majority of the citizenry live entirely within the visible realm. If philosophy is to be a legitimate part of the just then it must also be agreeable with the odds over the "highest"

of the non-philosophers, lest the tsvo be at

-which is to Say, the most important -things. In fact, the

public pets and the esoteric philosophers must at least walk in step, though they do not

"sing"in unison, if confikt is to be avoided and justice is to be possible. It was a commonplace in Socrates' &y to express one and the same point rhetoricdy by means of either type of discourse -mythic story or logical argument -or even by both types. For

example, there is the Great Speech of Plato' s J'rot-,

which Protagoras describes in

these very terms: "1 wouldn't think of begmdging you an explanation, Socrates," he replied. "But would you rather that 1explain by telling you a story, as an older man to a younger audience, or by developing an argument [pfiiûeov kéyov ém6e<[.o fi Mycp àie@ABcijv]?' The consensus was that he should proceed in whichever way he wished. '1think it would be more pleasant," he said, "if 1told you a story" (320~1-7)

In facf Protagoras goes on to deliver both his "mythic story" and his "argument" that vimie is teachable (328~24).The implication is that the two methods are equivalent,

while the phrase, "as an older man to a younger audience," further indicates that the

mythic story would be more appropriate in a didactic setting than a disputational one. We encountered another famous example of this mYtbPâ/1PgPS duality in the second chapter, where we discussed the orphic myth of Chthonian Dionysos. In that case, the orphic

doctrine of a body/soul duaüsm is the metaphysical implication of a myth about the generation of the human race, and this is the very myth that is then taken up and modified by Plato in the -.

In the

itself, Anstophanes provides another such

genealogical myth but leaves it to his audience (and to Plato's critics) to specify the corresponding lpeps,while Diotima provides both the myth of Ems's birth and an extensive logical exposition of that myth in her dialogue with Socrates. In each case, we have two separate types of discourse saying the same thing, but in entirely different

However, once we add to this duality the premise of the incommensurability of Being and Becoming, it foilows that we will not always be at Liberty to choose our mode of discourse -lpOpg or mrrtips. If a

philosopher speaks of Being to a penon

incapable of-,

then there wil1 be only one option: myth. But in using a myth,

whether it take the form of a metaphor, a genealogy, or a narrative story, the philosopher will employ naturalistic ternis in an attempt to express a supernaturd insight. This expression must needs be imprecise, but because it is not even attempting to convey the aith in rationai tems, it does not challenge the veracity of logical discourse -which does attempt to convey the truth in rational t e m . It will be a second-best form of

discourse because it cannot match the accuracy of logic for nflecting Being, but still it will be absolutely necessary because the people to whom it is addressed are not capable of

dialectic. However, as we saw above with regard to religion, myth is important not only for the people but for the philosophers as well -because they live not in Being, but in Becoming. Myth is what corresponds in the mind to what nature is outside of the mind, just as Plato says in his discussion of the divided line -und the philosophers live within nature. Philosophers neul myths, tw, in order to comprehend the world that ihey iive in.

The discussion of the divided line in the

leads directly into the famous

allegory of "the cave," yet another of Plato's myths that Socrates then interprets logicdly for his interlocutors. T h e cave" can provide us with an ideal means of characterizing the activity of tragic poetry in the .

We saw above (Ch3,166-9)how tragedy was

concerned with the creation and maintenance of a unified public view of the world; and yet this "public view of the world," confined as it is to the visible realm, must more or

less correspond to ''the cave" of the &g&&

-the prison from which the philosopher

must escape. But whüe "the cave" has mditionally been viewed by Plato's aitics as a "bad" place, it is worth repeating once again that it is the place where humanity dwells.

Even the philosopher, who seeks sojourn in the lands above, must always retum to "the

cave" in order to put what he has seen above into pracrice down below. We must remember that even the happy and vimious citizens of the Kaliipolis dwell in "the cave" of the visible world That visible world is the subject not only of perception and imagination in the min& of the people, but of belief @istis) as well, and it is this belief about the world and its relations to the gods that tragedy produces. Tragif poets, in so far

as they are the most public of poets, bear the chief responsibility for the construction and the maintenance of +'thecave;" rhey are, at lest in a limited sense, the "makers" of the

world we acnidly live in.

This Mngs us to the issue of the "quality" of that "cave." Just as our analysis of Plato's political dualism above (§B)had the unfomuiate consequence that the philosopher could not "love" the

in its present condition, we must ask what the philosopher

should think of the "cave" produced by contemporary tragic poets. Of corne, this question really amounts to the same matter as in the political context, since the present condition of the

would be at l e s t pady the product of the actual myth-makea

within Athenian society. The dissonance on account of which Socrates was singled out

for prosecution merely shows the reaction of a ''@eo$' philosopher compelled to live and work in a pPlis with a badly distorted view of the world His anti-demacratic sympathies, his qualms about the stories people tell of the go&, and his insistence on personal conversation as the means to better the city aii testify that the pisiis of Athens does not reflect the truth about Being at aii. The violent cave of the

m.where the

philosopher is ridiculed and threatened by the inmates, depicts Socrates' own histoncal circumstances, It is not that "the cave" is bad as such, but that its historical instantiations

are in fact bad. The goal, then, is not to lead the people out of the cave altogether, since

only the phiiosophen can get out of the cave, but to construct for them a better "cave,"

one that reflects Being well enough to make a good life possible, both for the individual and for the pPliS. This is the important job of the tragedian, in honour of which Agathon

is crowncd by Dionysos. It seems nasonable to object here, however, that the poet's job is redundant on this account. Given that the perfect philosopher has encountered Being directiy and must

be capable of putting that insight to work in the context of Becoming, should not the philosopher, in fact, be the best myth-maker, too? And indeed, if the whole problem with

Greek society is that the myths the Greeks live by have fallen out of accord with mith, how should the poet be in any position to correct that? In short, if the successful myth-

maker is the one who can best "interpret" supaturai "truths" into naturaiistic "beiiefs," then s w l y the philosopher is the only person in a position to do this, as the only person to have actually encountered Being directly. There seems something unassailable about this reasoning, which threatens to coiiapse the SocratedAgathon distinction and thereby to undermine this entire line of interpretation. It seems to demand that anyone who qualifies either to be a makcr of myths, a reiigious authority, or a ruler will also necessarily be a philosopher. But it was a simple fact of Greek culture in Plato's day that philosophy was a fairly recent development, and that the primary sources of authority in

GRek thought and religion were not phüosophers but oracles (especially Delphi), pets (especiaiiy Homer), and heroes (such as O~pheus)-all three of which were ducctiy connecteci to the ultimate source of authority in these matters, the gods. Plato does not

appear to question the authority of sources such as these. Here we must recail Diotima's pronouncement quoted above: ''Spirits are many in number and of many kinds, and one of

them is Love" (203a6-8). Philosophy, with its close affiliation with Ems, is only one of the routes between gods and humans. Poets had always been understood to be the mouthpieces of the Muse, with their poetry being attributed directly to the goddess, and Plato appears to endorse such a view." In the &&gy,

Socrates criticizes the poets for

pretending to know what their poetry means, but he does not criticize their poetry itself. Rather, any value that their poetry might have he attributes to divine inspiration: 1decideci that it was not wisdom that enabled them to M t e their poetry, but

a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and propheis who deliver dl their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. (22b9-c4) The

''m7 philosophers, then, are not alone in the pPlis in king "inspired" by god, and

are thcrefore not alone in being the source of authoritative speech. However, as even this passage makes clear, the speech of pets demands interpretation (which is why Socrates had to ask them what they meant), and that hterpretation is a logical matter (which is why Socrates couid confute their explanations). What distinguishes philosophers from al1 others who "daimonically" spout forth their divine communiques is that philosophers

employ a logical method to approach the truth of their own, and others', experiences of the divine. Because of that logical methoà, their minds do not simply remain within the

visible reah, receiving information from above that they cannot help but experience inaccurately in naniralistic terms (lke Akibiades stniggiing to describe what he saw "within" Socrates, "by means of images 151' eirôvov]," 215a5). Their minds actuaily

rise up to the intelligible nalm and acquire there the very characteristics of Being itself,

by means of diaiectic. It is because of this logicai method that the philosophers are --

-

-

-

53%: "And w h u [the pets] say k mie, for a p e t is a light and whged thing, E-g., and holy. and never able to compose until he has become hspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longet in him."

capable of interpreting divine communiques in an authoritative fashion. Their mincis are familia.with bodi sides of the divided line, rather than just the lower si& as is the case with most "seers."

In this way the delphic oracle which declared Socrates wisest was accepted by Socrates as the tnith, but as a truth that had to be interpreted

-and that interpretation

was itself an act of philosophy. In like fashion the philosophers, admittedly new on the

scene in Greece, could be conceived by Plato as stepping into a role prepared for thern by the nature of reality as such. If in the past divine oracles and the inspired speech of poets had been handled haphazardly and with mixed results, now, at least. the Greeks possessed the means to get it right: philosophy could provide secure pronouncements on divine

matters because of its ability logicaily to interpret the human experiences of the divine. Dialectic is the crucial criterion that gives philosophers a position of authority over "divine" pats and seers without denying the inherent "truth" of those people's "visions."

In fact, considering that Agathon is crowned by Dionysos, and that Socrates describes Agathon's effects in the theatre in terms that are suggestive of the philosopher's own experience of beauty, it seems likely that Plato intends to deny to pphosophers the role of poet: Le., of speaking directly to the masses and actively constructing the public "cave."

Rather, the authority of their esoteric Uranian cults would give more of a supe~sory d e , like that of censors, over the conduct of the Pandemic cults wherein tragedy makes

and portrays its myths. As Plato makes very clear in Books II and IIi of the however, the en& body of traditional Greek mythology would have to be overhauled

before it could be acceptable in the formation of the cave of the W p o l i s . The foIlowing quotation is merely exemplary:

So, even though we praise many things in Homer, we wonTtapprove of the Qeam Zeus sent to Agamemnon, nui of Aeschylus when he makes Thetis Say that Apollo sang in prophesy at her wedding Whenever anyone says such

....

things about a go& we'il be angry with him, refuse hlln a chorus, and not allow his poetry to be used in the education of the Young. (Reaublic 383a-c) Because the city already possesses its divinely inspired poets, the philosophers need not assume the task of cave-making themselves; the Muse, speaking through the poets, can do that even better than the philosopher. But because the poets are themselves to some extent bbinterpreting"what they have seen, and naturaily tend to add in bits of their own material to what the goddess has spoken through them (lori 534e0535a), the philosopher must always be vigilant in minding that nothing unacceptable passes for truth. Hence, there are two distinct types of speakers of divine things in the

w,and neither is sufficient on its

own to manufacture the "best" world for human beings to live in.

-

E Concusiioa: PlatoysDialogues and Plat& Philosophy This brings us to our conclusion in what is perhaps the most useful result of this analysis of the .-

Its contest of wisdom pub Agathon's and Socrates' modes of

discourse into stark opposition, and we bave discussed that opposition mainly in t e m of the referents of their contrasting types of speech: what they speak of and in what sense

bey may be said to express the truth, But these types of discourse also contrast in terms

of the way they are conducted. Plato bas Alkibiades explicitiy connect the ecstatic experience of the cult of philosophy with Socrates and his "philosophical talk." As a consequence, Plato appears to confine philosophical discourse to living conversation oral, not writfen, dialogue

-especjailysince Socrates was famous for having not written

his philosophy down in books. TragÏc poeay, cm the other han& is an artificial portrayal

of conversations which are written down in canonical form prior to performance. Actors do not have real conversations on stage but memorize their iines beforehand and repeat them by rote; and if there was to be more than one performance, they would simply repeat

those same words again. It is partly because of this difference that the pets can be so easily represented (and criticized) in temu of what they teach, and they were typically

spoken of as the "educators" of the Greeks; S m t e s , by contmst, denies teaching anything to anyone. Our analysis has provided a rationale for lhis difference: the

discourse of the pets constructs the belief-structure 0of the popular worid, and these beliefs are as stabk as nature itselfappears to be. Poetry is a type of cosmology.

The dialectical discourse of the philosophers, however, exposes the public beiief-smictm to be the same unstable mass of contradictions as natwe irselfreaily is, where everything is in motion and all structures require continuous maintenance. Dialectical discourse is a dynamic method of approach to Being, and strives to share in the absolute security and

stability of knowledge. In abandoning OiSfiS, dialectic also abandons doctrine; and since the ultimate tnith which it seeks is not such as can be rendered naniralisticaliy, it does not

end in doctrine either. The description of philosophy as ecstatic cult seems to leave no

other option: tmth can only be experienced, and not taught. And yet ail of this is being shown to us by Plato's ,-

a piece of

philosophical wriring. Moreover, it is a piece of writing in the fom of wxitten -

conversations, just like tragedy, and an implicit assumption of our entire analysis has ban that the

can be read like a poem, for what it has to teach. Our reading of

Plato's work is itself a "logical interpretation." Not only that, but much of the conversation the svrnwsium pomays is of the sort we should lüce to cali Socrates'

bbphilosophicaltalk" So the question which has been asked a thousand times over the centuries since Plato wrote must be asked again here: Are Plato's dialogues to be counted as philosophy, or as poetry? -as addressing themselves to the intelligible realm, or to

the visible realm? The obvious answer, given the apparent definitions of those types of discourse that the &mposim has provided, would appear to be that Plato's dialogues are both poetry and philosophy. mat is certainly how Plato has traditionally been interpreted

by his critics: Le., he combines both types of discourse side by side, using the popular appeal of poetry to entertain his readers and draw them into the more difficult, dialectical portions of his writing where he then openly engages in philosophy. It is true that this sort of interpretation has a lot of points in its favour. There is no denying that the dialogues

are written down in a canonical version, like a poem; they make continuous appeals to images and ideas from the visible realm, and they even appear to contain platonic doctruies (such as the Theory of Forxns, and so on). At the same time, Plato uses logic to

challenge dl manner of popular beliefs, and Socrates' talk of Forms and the like seems clearly to point awayfrom the visible realm.Moreover, the tendency to end in @ seems well suited to challenging an interpreter's complacency with regard to the "teaching"of a dialogue. Plato's philosophical commentators have therefore typically

divided his dialogues into philosophical and poetic sections, and have concentrated their

interpretive efforts on the philosophical parts. As we saw in the fint chapter, it is this very tendency that has k e n responsible for the neglect of Aikibiades' speech in the itself, for as Alkibiades says, he intends to speak "hrough images" [6r' eix6vov, 215a51, and his speech is altogerher more "poetical" and more particuiar than Socrates' "elenctic" conversation with Diotima Would it not then be reasonable to infer

that Plato is a "philosopher-poet" who has elected to use poetry as the means to promote

his less popdar type of discourse? This traditionai understanding of the function of Plato's dialogues is precisely what our reading of the

must challenge. For the erotic dualism expressed by

this dialogue has designated these two types of discoune as incommensurable;and while

it rnight at fmt seem attractive to conceive of the platonic dialogue as the very image of (i.e., as a unity composed out of two incommensurable elements -poetry

the just

and philosophy -which nonetheless work together reciprocally to produce a good) we must recdl that the erotic duaiism that the

describes is dynamic while the

wrîtten dialogues (including the &mpsimitself), unlike the

m,are not. That is the

problem with any written IpeQS:it is not alive, whereas an oral conversation, in a sense, is alive. The philosopher conversing with his beloved is not simply a font of wisdom which flows into the beloved: it is the philosopher himselfwho rises, in response to the speech of his beloved, up to a noetic vision of being. In contrast, the writer of a poem is essentially speaking in monologue, like a "teacher," and receives no "feedback"from his audience before his work is ahady done. Poetry is essentially didactic, in that it is a one-

way transfer from the p e t to his audience, and Plato's dialogues cannot help but share in this n a m . At the same time, however, Plato's dialogues do not conforrn to the mode1 of

poetry offered by the

-.

either. The function of tragic poetry, we have argued,

is to build and maintain "the cave;" it is didactic and speaks to the

as a whole. It

can speakto the whole demps only because it is performed dr;unatically before its very eyes, just as Homds poetry is m g to the e n t h Gnek world by rhapsodes on myriad

occasions -always the same. But to experience Plato's dialogues one m u t fmt of all have been able to read, and must also have had access to the books. Our lmowledge about the availability of Plato's dialogues in his own lifetime is not very detailed, but in any case Plato would have been reachingfar less than the entire population, with a concentration on the most highiy educated of readers. If his goal was to reconstruct the "cave" within which the Greeks, or even just the Athenians, üved, then his dialogues

were uniikely to ever be in a position to effect such a grand transformation. That, of course, would have been a merely circumstantial constraint, and we might stiil wish to

think of Plato as heroically striving to modify "the cave" for as many readers as possible, even if he was denied the ability to teach them dl; in fact, that is part of the hypothesis that he is using poetry pnmarily to attract more readers than he would get by writing pure philosophy. But there is more than just this circumstantial limitation on the dialogues' effectiveness as public poetry: they are constructed in such a way as to actively assault

and undennine the reader's confidence in the beliefs that make up his ''cave." In almost every category of knowledge, be it nahue, the go&, virtue, poetry, aime and punishment. and so on, Plato's dialogues show Socrates invalidating the popular mind-sets. And while we can well concede that this is an illustration of dialectic in action, and hence a

dramatization of the life of philosophy, it also has a tremendous impact on the beliefs of the readers. Far h m consüucting and maintaining %e cave" for the reader, as it is the

fiinction of p t r y to do, Plato's dialogues openly engage in world-unmaking, just as S m t e s did himseIf on the streets of Athens. The dialogues are no more an example of the s'-

tragic poetry than they are an example of the m

s dialectic.

Contrary to the thesis that the dialogues are dualistic -both poeay and

philosophy at the same time -the

shows us that these two modes of

discourse are distinct and incommensurable, and that the dialogues themselves arr neither poetry nor philosophy but a third mode of discome nlated to both. But how c m

somethhg be '"related" to both sides of the divided line, to bath elements of an incommensurabIe pair? For insofar as the third element is "related" to one, will it not thereby also become incommensurable to the other? We have just seen that if dialogue is

"like" drama, then it must be "unlike" philosophy, and vice versa. The answer is provided

Eros itself. Eros is none other than a "third"

by the cenaal concept of the :

element that "relates" two incommensurable opposites: "Being of an intermediate nature. a spirit bridges the gap between them, and prevents the universe from falling into two separate halves" (202e6-7). Just as the speeches at Agathon's sMnwsion are neither dramatic poetry nor philosophical tak, but a common form of dionysiac discourse between them by means of which these two forms cm be brought into contact for a time and made, as it were, commensurable, Plato's dialogues themselves also bring these two incommensurable forms into contact. Thus, the erotic speeches of the

are

themselves an image of the platonic dialogues, and the npetition of those-speechesvia rote memory by the likes of Anstodemos and Apollodorus is effectively identical to the

written-down condition of Plato's works.

In this way, the

actuaily reflects back upon itself and becomes

involved in its o m thesis: what it teaches us, among other things, is that Plato's

dialogues are themselves a form of discourse that "bridges the gap." üke Eros, between

socratic dialectic and tragic poetry. Eros is dynamic, and is oriented from the lessa to the

pater, fÎom the mortal to the immortai. Wïthin the visible d m ,poetry is one of the

erotic activities that maintains the identities of things by producing copies of hem; i.e., the "everlastingness" of the poetic and religious traditions that maintain "the cave" is a

type of i m r t a l i ~But . it is also by the action of Ems, via the "lpppi' of lovers and

beloveds, that the philosopher rises to the supematural realrn and participates in genuine immortality. The platonic dialogues me yet another reification of Eros, in this case

mediating between these other two levels of erotic discourse. But if the SYmwsium thereby becomes a self-revelation of Eros in action, it also constitutes itself as an initiation into the lesser mysteries of Ems.

The dialogues are necessary because philosophers are not k m philosophers: some few are born with the potentid to be philosophers, but they will go awry if they are not caught at an early age and led towards a proper pursuit of "love." Everyone is raised in "the cave:" the philosophers arr part of the m,and they live there,too. Socrates is part of the audience that attends Agathon's cave-building tragedy. But "the cave."

whether good or bad, is still the world of appearances, and the philosopher is confined

there by his childhood education composed of myths and 'Yalsehoods." As Alkibiades' speech illustrates so clearly, the potential philosopher must fmt "hear the call," like those who are "seized"[~asé~eo0ai] by the music of Marsyas'pipe and are thereby revealed to

be yeaming "to enter by initiation into union with the gods." It is Socrates' talk that has this effect: his '"merewords" are lîke Marsyas' magical pipings. But the real due to

Plato's d e in this process is provided by another feature that Socrates' raUc has in

common with Marsyas:myone c m ''play" it:

Marsyas needed an instrument in order to charm men by the power which proceeded out of his mouth, a power which is stiU exercised by those who perform his melodies Q reckon the tunes ascnbed to Olympus to belong to

Marsyas, who taught him); his productions alone, whether executed by a skiiled male performer or by a wretched flute-girl, are capable, by reason of their divine origin. of throwing men into a trance and thus distinguishing those who yeam to enter by initiation into union with the gods. But you, Somites, are so far supenor to Marsyas that you produce the same effect by mere words....a speech by you or men a very Mfferent report of what you have said stirs us to the depths and casts a spell over us. (215cLd6,my italics) Here we have an explanation of the dominant d e that Socrates plays in Plato's dialogues. Plato is none other than the "skilied male performer" -the Olympus to Socnites' Marsyas

-who gives report of w h t Socrotes hm said. By imitating the divine

speech of Socrates (i.e., dialectic) in the dramatic form of a written report, Plato's dialogues cm have this same effect on their readers as Socrates' own persona1 conversation: the effect of throwing men into the "trance" of philosophicai taik. This is not actually diaiectic, and it could never lead someone to the threshold of Beauty itself; that requires live. one-on-one conversation with a 'properly" educated philosopher. But it is an initiation into the lesser mysteries of Eros: an introduction to the "madness and frenzy of philosophy." The function of the dialogues, then, is Like that of a net, cast out over the

to catch the potential philosophas: many who read these dialogues will

be unimpressed, but some few will be "charmecl"and will corne to the Academy seeking a skilied philosopher to conduct them in the higher mysteries of Eros.Plato is not writing to the &~IW as the &IJ,QS

the way a tragic poet does; he is not building any caves. with ears for this kind of music.

Rather, he is wrîting for ail those amongst the

Socrates was one man, the best of men and, by Plato's account, absolutely unique, but his power was limited by the scope of his own voice? In his death, philosophy had lost its - -

-

-

By means of the dialogues Plato has saved Socrates h m the fate of Pythagoras -the fate held in store for him at the han& of Xenophon, Aeschines and the other minor Socratics. Pythagoras was a mantic visionary who left his folIowers a collection of divinely inspired acusmata

greatest advocate, but by the skiil of his '"performance"of Socrates' "music,"Plato has brought Socrates -and with him philosophy -to aii ages and al1 places. We rnight weU doubt whether the Aca&my would still exist to this day had it not been for this collection of socratic '"melodies:' but as-longas they survive, and circulate amongst the

m,we

need not fear for the s w i v d of the Academy into the future. In an uplifting nim of poetic justice, Plato's & ~ ~ Q & J J has itself become perhaps the supreme example of his

"immortal chiIdren of the mind."

which they pmsmred and mterpretedforever afier as the font of a i i W o m ; Pythagoras thereby became a pet, Le., a doctrinarian -not a philosopher. By contrast, Plato pmvided the meam for Socrates' foliowers ta share in Socrates' own divine vision, so that he hirnserfneed not teach a thmg. As a remit, the "'mightychahs" of magnetic rings dangülig h m Socrates' "loadstone"have numbered in the thousands and crossed the millennia, so thai to this &y innumerable people are "held fast"by his bbattractbe force."

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lMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (QA-3)